The Jungle Movie
by the-lionness
Summary: Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings. "...but I wasn't 'in the heat of the moment' then and I'm not now. I'm serious about everything I'm saying...I will do anything that's important to you because I love you!"
1. Them

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

**Them**

He wiped his hands on his jeans until he was sure they were dry; the last thing he wanted to put in the mail was his envelope with sweaty hand prints all over it.

He drew in a deep breath and willed his hands to stop shaking, pressing the deck of his skateboard harder into his side. He didn't have to look down to know that his knuckles were turning white.

It seemed like the whole entire universe had thrown everything in its power to keep him from the post office all morning, but he was here now, standing in front of the box for outgoing mail and holding the one thing that would bring him closer to what he wanted.

"_Grandpa, Grandma, you have to see this! I found a map!"_

He and his grandparents hadn't gotten much sleep that night. He couldn't have slept even if he had wanted to. He'd been so scared that if he had closed his eyes, the journal and the map—_everything_ about that day would have just been his imagination running away from him again.

They, Grandpa and Grandma, had placed the map on their coffee table. They had ordered more Chinese. They had talked and cried and tried to be calm.

"_Well, Shortman, it seems like Fate has placed quite a gem in our laps, huh?" Grandpa chewed solemnly on his last fried dumpling, forcing the chewy dough and pork filling down his throat. "There are a lot of things that can happen now that you've found this and some of those things we do...or don't find out, we won't like. But your grandma and me are gonna leave it up to you. What do you want to do?"_

_"__I want to find them, Grandpa."_

_Phil paused before slowly nodding. "__Alright, Arnold. Then that's what we'll do."_

He wrote so many letters to so many people after that, failing and starting again and again from stage one. The government of The Republic of San Lorenzo, the Red Cross, the airbase where his parents had gotten their plane, the manufacturer of said plane, the chief of this or that remote village they may have passed in their travels. He felt like every single person in Central America knew his story. Most always sent letters with their regret about not being able to help him and advice that was almost immediately unhelpful.

And sometimes he got nothing back at all.

He tried not to let it take over his life too much. He tried not to be so openly upset every time those simple black-and-white, one page letters, typed or written in basic, broken English reached his home. It was for his grandparents' sake. They had been looking for his parents longer than him; they didn't deserve to have his worries on top of their own. He began reminding himself when something fell apart that he had only been doing this for a little while, a month, six months, a year.

He continued to the do things he had always done: play baseball in Gerald Field; play his jazz and house records; find himself _like _like pretty girls and stop because of whatever the reason was that time. But in between all those things, he began taking his science classes seriously and poring over his Spanish homework, not stopping until most of his papers were "A"s. And he began to gather books about mythology, aviation, Latin countries—everything and anything that could have possibly been helpful...

And he continued dreaming the same dreams over and over again. Wild dreams where things went his way and the people who were supposed to be there, were there.

He grew a little taller and started caring about having muscles. His voice started changing, a wobble between the voice he had at nine and something trying to be a bit deeper. Girls that liked him began talking about his eyes, a deep green, and his smile. His hair stayed a little unruly despite his faux hawks; his head stayed oblong.

And he kept the hat—there was nothing anyone could tell him to let it go.

"_Do you think I'm crazy, Gerald?" He picked up another rock and tossed it in the river. Curve ball._

"_About what?" His best friend did the same, his toss splashing a little further from where the other had dropped. His hand brushed his hair for the tenth time since they had started throwing rocks. Gerald had cut off what he called "The Kid n Play 'do" a few months ago and substituted it for a fresh cut. Arnold knew for a fact that every time Gerald stood in front of anything with a reflection, he switched between that and checking to see if he really was growing peach fuzz. _

"_Trying so hard to find them. I mean, Grandpa said that we might not find anything at first, but…I'm almost thirteen now. Maybe there isn't anything else to know. It happened so—"_

"_Nah." Gerald turned to his friend. "Ya not crazy. Every time anybody sees you, talks about you, it's always about something good you did for them. 'Arnold did this for me, Arnold did that for me.'" Gerald's deep voice cracked as he imitated a high-pitched voice. "You're always doing good stuff for people without even being asked. Ya like…Papa Teresa. Why shouldn't _you _get what _you _want?_

"_I say, keep trying, man. You'll find them." Gerald threw another rock and they watched it skip and land with a definite, resolute _thunk.

_He grinned. "Thanks, Gerald."_

"_You're a bold kid, man. A bold kid."_

That had been his doubt.

Or maybe that had been what he needed, because that night, he'd gone on the computer and had typed in something he hadn't really thought of looking for before: "Green-Eyed People."

The Green-Eyed People. He had a few books about them and a flier to the museum's Indigenous Peoples exhibition they had had a year back. With as many times he had gone to see the pictures of temples and found wall carvings they had had on display in those glass cases, he thought he knew as much about them as anyone else did. Maybe that was why he hadn't ever really thought about them.

And that was why he was surprised when he saw all the results in his search.

A few clicks on his Dell to here and there, and he stumbled on this one website that had nothing special about it. A plain lime green backdrop and plain font and long lists of links. But with blurry eyes and his mind worlds away from an Honors Biology paper he hadn't started and was due the next morning, he clicked on the first one that caught his eye.

And found this:

**_"__Green Eyes, Babbling Tongues: A Short Study of Native Speech in San Lorenzo_**

_**by Eduardo del Verde Rosa"**_

He felt something twist in his stomach. It couldn't have been the same "Eduardo" that he had read again and again in his dad's journal.

Could it?

He read the whole thing, seeing "Green-Eyes" and "my colleagues" in each column on every page.

And at the end of those twenty-five pages, in black-and-white, was a picture of all of them together. Eduardo and his mom and dad laughing and having the time of their lives. From the look of it, it had to be before he had been born.

He screamed.

He called his grandpa and grandma upstairs to see what he'd found.

He smiled when they screamed.

He wasn't crazy.

He'd found a piece of the puzzle.

He struggled trying to write that essay for class and went to bed with his laptop on—just to test whether the page would still be there when he woke up in the morning.

It was.

He spent another week looking for current information on "Eduardo del Verde Rosa" but had found that the whereabouts of his father's best friend was another dead end. The essay he had found had been written when he was three, after his parents had disappeared; there wasn't anything else that Eduardo had written since then, and the sites he found with information about him never mentioned anything current.

He went back to that page to read that essay again over and over. And on the fifth time, he finally saw something that he had missed before in the copyright:

_**"The Smith Institution of Anthropology"**_

His fingers opened another window and typed in those words and clicked on the first thing that came up.

And there it was, this glossy looking webpage with pictures of exotic animals and villages and scientists poring over flowers and laboratory equipment and links to all the places they had been.

And at the top, "San Lorenzo" in large block letters.

**_"__The jungle. The past. A new history. The Smith Institute has been in San Lorenzo since the 1970s, exploring the history of the peoples of Central America. Dedicating time and our love for the mysteries of the Mayan and Green-Eyed peoples, the institute awards grants to individuals exploring the landmarks the past has left behind…"_**

There wasn't any screaming this time.

Just resolve and seconds, hours, days, months dedicated to writing the most important letter of his life. The letter that explained everything, from the beginning to the end to right now.

He didn't know what that moment was.

But he knew what it was gonna be.

He was almost fourteen now. He was ready to search. He wanted to know what happened after they left. He wanted them.

He looked at the envelope, his handwriting written neatly on the envelope. He thought about the letter inside, detailing to anybody who looked inside his life, his story.

And for a moment, he thought about them.

What they were like now.

What they were doing.

Where they were.

Who they were with, if they were with anybody.

Their adventures.

The things they said to each other every day.

What they'd tell him when he saw them.

What he'd tell them.

He opened the slot and closed his eyes.

"Please let this work. Please."

He placed the envelope inside and walked out.

This could only be the beginning—the real beginning.

* * *

_a/n: __This past summer, I began writing my first __HA!__ Fanfic called "The Things They Cling To." To sum it up, it is a collection of one-shots based on the idea of the show's characters being "bound to" the things that were most important to them—things, people, relationships. Towards the end, I gave Arnold his second one-shot entitled "Them" that covered the gap of time between "The Journal" and what was supposed to be __The Jungle Movie__. _

_I liked it. And I began thinking about adding my own spin on what would've happened if Nickelodeon had actually let Arnold reach San Lorenzo. I hope you like it. So, R&R and this to your Story/Author Alerts. _

_s/n: "The Things They Cling To" can be considered a prequel to this, and I do "take" things from that and add them to this, but please do not think that you're bound to read it in order to understand what's going on in my "TJMF." Although it'd make me happy to know you read it._


	2. Chapter 1

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

**Translations: (Thank you very much Kaa for the corrections!)**

**arroz y carne – rice and meat**

"_**Felicidades" - **_**Congratulations**

"_**¡Detenganse!**_**" - "Stop!" **

"_**¿Quién es ustedes?**_**" - "Who are you?"**

* * *

_**According to Craig Bartlett, **__**The Jungle Movie**__** was when Arnold's last name was finally going to be revealed.**_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_...the dust and sand in the air was getting thicker; he could barely see his sneakers, let alone the next step he was supposed to take with them. But he was ready; his hands were heavy and he could hear his name being called._

"_Hey, Arnold!"_

" _...Arnold..."_

"_...go..."_

The fourteen-year-old's eyes popped open. With a _whoosh _and creak of his bed springs, he bolted upright in bed. He yawned with the knowledge that he hadn't gotten much sleep last night. His dreams had been running wild again, but he couldn't remember if there was anything specific to them.

The clouds in his sky roof passed above him; the boarding house and neighborhood outside was coming to life to his ears.

There was a sudden knocking at his door. "Hey, ARNOLD!"

His eyes slid towards the door. "Yeah, Grandpa?"

"Are you gonna get out of bed? Get breakfast or something? It's almost ten-thirty."

_10:30?_ He threw his covers off and ambled out of bed, clenching his bedroom doorknob and almost tearing the door off its hinges. "Mornin', Grandpa. Did the mail come yet?" He ducked under his grandfather's arm still stretched out for the door.

Phil blinked at the sudden fast movement. "Not yet. It's Saturday; you know the mail comes by later on the weekend—it's not going anywhere, Arnold. You can at least get breakfast first. Your grandma made flapjacks." Grandpa's words fell on deaf ears as Arnold raced down the hallway, careful not to slip as he ran downstairs past Ernie and Mr. Kokoshka.

"Woah—Arnold, where's the fire?"

"Arnold, all this running in the morning is unnecessary."

"Sorry..." He practically stomped his way down the steps. "Mornin', Grandma." He opened the door, stepped to the side to the let the riot of animals through, and walked outside.

Push-ups, brushing his teeth, breakfast. All that could wait until after the mail came.

He didn't have to wait long; Harvey was already picking up the mail from the corner mailbox. "Yo, Arnold!" His deep, raspy voice greeted the teen as he approached the boarding house stoop.

"Hey, Harvey. Anything?"

Harvey rifled through his bag, shifting packages and letters until producing an expected thick stack and placing them in Arnold's hand. "Buncha junk mail...Ya grandma's still getting those solicitors—"

"Anything for me?" He asked with guarded hope, the kind that knew and expected the bad but held out just a little while longer for the good.

The mailman's smile drooped as he shook his head sadly. "I checked and double-checked like I always do. Nothing for you today either. I'm sorry, man." Harvey didn't hold it against Arnold when the teen went back inside without saying goodbye. Harvey walked back down the stoop and moved unto the next house.

No one said anything as he shuffled into the kitchen, rummaging around for the largest plate in the kitchen and a fork for the pancakes. There was no point in talking; the news had been the same again. The sound of his silverware scraping the plate and chewing filled in the emptiness.

Late May, last year. He had sent his letter to the Smith Institution in late May last year.

They had "celebrated" the anniversary again. He'd officially turned fourteen a few days after. They had gone through the motions of Christmas and New Year's again. The year had ended. Spring had come again.

Today was officially March. Counting from late May to today was almost eight months. Eight months of picking up the mail and waiting for a reply for the one letter, the last letter, he had written to Smith. He'd given up writing letters to other places; his hopes were on that one place. He hadn't thought about what would happen if it didn't work out because he didn't have that many other choices.

The doorbell rang.

Wordlessly, Arnold got up from his chair and headed to the front door, half-expecting Harvey to hand him a boarder's letter he had overlooked the first time.

That was why the sight of a man in a crisp black suit with dark Aviator glasses and a manilla envelope tucked under his arm had been unexpected.

"Are _you_ Arnold." The man said, the lens of his glasses obscuring any sight of his eyes. Not that he needed them; Arnold, in another growth spurt, was on the verge of hitting five-six, but he was at eye-level with the man's jacket buttons.

"Yeah." He exhaled sharply as a heavy manila envelope was pressed into his stomach. He took a step back as the man bent to his level, so close that Arnold could see himself in the dark lenses.

"This contains something intended for you and for you only. Please note that on March first at ten thirty-nine and ten seconds, you received this package." The man went into his suit's breast pocket and produced a thin white slip. "Sign this. Last name, first name."

"_Shortman" _

"_Arnold"_

As quickly as the slip had appeared, it was tucked into his suit again. "Have a nice day."

Grandma and Grandpa stepped out of the kitchen as Arnold walked back inside.

"Who was it?"

"Whatcha got there, Arnold?"

Arnold's eyes scanned the label and then he swallowed hard. "Something from...The Smith Institution of Anthropology."

His hands couldn't rip open the envelope fast enough. Brochures. Pamphlets. A single, one-paged letter. Handwritten.

"_**Dear Arnold,**_

"_**By way of introduction, I would like to say I am truly honored for your consideration of The Smith Institution **__**of Anthropology in furthering your endeavors to find your parents. There are few people in the community of anthropology and medicine who are not familiar with the work of Miles and Stella Shortman. I am personally grateful for their contributions as it has fueled many of our objectives in Central America. That is why it pains me to write that your age makes you ineligible to receive one of our grants for study in San Lorenzo.**_

"_**However, in the same breath, I would like to tell you that you are eligible for another award. The award, specifically entitled "7 Days Around the World," is given to a high school student and his/her classmates to travel to one of our sites for the experience of a week in the life of our scholars. We provide transportation to the country of choice and work site along with the essentials and our continued relationship with the local peoples allows for the arrangement for the basic necessities—food, water, laundry. This award is very new, and its recipient would be the first of many to have this opportunity. **_

"_**I, along with the board, after a long period of deliberation, have decided to give our first award to you. Congratulations! **_

"_**We have already arranged your departure to The Republic of San Lorenzo for early Saturday morning. The cost of plane tickets has already been paid. Your guide will meet you for the start of your week-long trip.**_

"_**I hope that you find the answers and the people you are looking for. Good luck!**_

"_**Best,**_

"_**Dr. E.G.R. Smith, PhD **_

"_**Founder, and Head Chairman of The Smith Institution of Anthropology"**_

Grandma and Grandpa had cheered with tears in their eyes as Arnold finished.

Thoughts of breakfast had completely disappeared from Arnold's mind.

He was going to San Lorenzo.

* * *

"Class, class! Settle down, please!" Mr. Simmons yelled above the noise of his third period Honors English class. When his old group of students had moved into the final tier of their grade-school education, he had been promoted into the English department. While some of the kids in his other classes may have had a lot to say against his crazy assignments, most of this particular class knew him to be as perky and happy as he had been when he was their instructor five years ago.

His smile brightened as the group of fourteen and fifteen-year-olds paused in their various conversations about their weekends and their loath for Monday and the various midterms plaguing their lives. "Before we pick up on our conversation about Shakespeare," he paused as the expected groans rose throughout the room, "our classmate Arnold has a very special announcement. Please, lend him your ears."

Twenty-two pairs of eyes turned to their classmate.

Arnold stared at his class, more or less the same group of kids he had grown up with since he was little and rubbed the back of his neck in nervousness. Out of his seven class periods, he had decided his Honors English class was the one he wanted to share the news with; this was the class that had most of his old friends after all. He wasn't going to say his true intentions (Gerald, at the very least, knew everything, and that was enough) just the right amount so that it wasn't lying.

"This past summer, I, uh, applied to a...contest with The Smith Institution of Anthropology. They do a lot of work studying old ruins and stuff in other countries. The winner and their classmates get to go to one of their countries for a week. And I won the trip to San Lorenzo. So, all of us are going to...San Lorenzo in Central America."

There was a pause and a few blinks. But those never lasted long anyway.

"Mexican food!" Harold.

"San Lorenzo ain't Mexico, Harold." Curly.

"Oh my _gosh! _Flamenco! Salsa! " Eugene.

"Shopping, lounging—drinks with little umbrellas!" Rhonda squealed.

"And the senoritas, immune to my charms." Sid. A few snickered or rolled their eyes at this, threw paper balls at him.

"Arnold," Mr. Simmons said above the excited crowd, "this is wonderful news. When do we leave?"

Arnold's smile widened at his classmates' excitement. "The eighth, this Saturday."

"So we'll be there for Spring Break?" The chattering grew, some in disappointment about the end of their own plan and others in anger at having to miss out, but most in excitement about the news.

"What an amazingly convenient coincidence!" Stinky.

"Okay, class! There is a lot to do before our trip, so we have to be prepared! Make sure to have your passports ready. I will give you permission slips at the end of the class for your parents! And pack the necessities...like, like, your toothbrush..."

* * *

The week passed by into Friday and Helga found herself at Rhonda's monthly sleepover, watching as every other girl around her stood in front of Rhonda's wall of mirrors evaluating themselves in the swimsuits they were planning to wear for the trip:

Rhonda, her hands on her slim, golden-brown hips as she struck poses and modeled her "Oscar de la Renta couture swimwear."

Phoebe, in her tankini, trying to make her hair cover the chest that was the envy of half of the girls in the ninth grade class and the whole entire YMAA Fencing Team.

Sheena.

Lila.

So on and so forth, blah blah blah.

About the only other girl not ogling at herself was Nadine, and the only reason why Nadine wasn't doing it was because she had already picked out what she was was wearing and was more concerned about her camera's batteries and trying to find a way to control the large, springy curls that adorned her head.

Helga had already shot down Rhonda's attempt to bait her into wearing a swimsuit—as if she was going to be caught dead wearing something that showed that much skin—and was scheming. And like all her schemes, they involved _him._

Arnold.

This past summer, Helga had come to the decision that she was going to tell Arnold that she was in love with—correction, that she was _still _in love with him. That that time on the FTi Building hadn't been "the heat of the moment" and she had meant what she had said. Her "once bitten, twice shy" thing was in the past; this was the present, and presently, she wanted him. It wasn't as if she could stop at this point even if she wanted to.

But the summer had passed and the school year had started and she hadn't said anything close to what she had wanted. Things between them were different, but in a good way: they talked, she was generally nicer to him and most of her classmates (although she still called him "Football Head"—but that was just habit; it was about as hostile as her saying words like "the" or "something"). It was just that the timing was always wrong.

Of course Phoebe had immediately struck down that "lie" the last time they had talked about her most recent failure. They both had already determined that Helga had practically every class with Arnold this year and that she sat beside each him for three of them. What she was unconsciously doing was avoiding him, so unless she was trying to work on telepathy, that wasn't going to fly and nothing was going to happen.

_Fine. _

But all that was going to be in the past. This Spring Break was going to be _The _Spring Break. The one where she made Arnold hers once and for all. She had been planning it since New Year's and had even gone so far as to prepare. She had speeches prepared and timed to, like, two minutes or something.

And now there was San Lorenzo.

Everyone and this brother was going to be there acting like idiots. Mr. Simmons was going to be busy making sure no one died or got buried alive and the workers at the site wouldn't be babysitting. She could have a chance to say it.

She and Arnold would be alone. It would be beautiful—romantic, better than the movies or her fantasies because it'd be real. He'd be there wearing that one plaid shirt she liked on him and his little hat. He'd say something only he would say.

Everything would be the way she imagined it: her clothes, her breath, her hair, her words. Their kiss.

Now all she needed was the balls to do it.

* * *

"Come in, Grandpa."

Phil opened the door and walked inside to the sight of Arnold stuffing a book into his duffel bag. He gave a wry smile as Arnold scratched his head in concentration over his things. That hairdo of his was a whole lot less extreme than the ones Miles had worn when he was little, but it was amazing to know that they scratched their heads in the exact same way, with three fingers and their pinkies in the air. "I brought you a turkey sandwich and some milk. You know, to help you pass the time packing."

"Thanks." Arnold grabbed half and stuffed most of it into his mouth, waving away the milk and swallowing the food dry. "I'm almost done. Just one more thing." He wiped his hand on his blanket and grabbed his dad's journal, placing it on top of a few books as carefully as he could.

His grandfather looked into the bag at the folded clothes, bottles of sunscreen and bug spray, books about speaking Spanish and San Lorenzo, and the gold lettering of his passport. This brought back memories...and that was the very reason why he was here.

He grabbed at the other half of the sandwich and took a bite. "Sit down, Shortman." He swallowed as Arnold complied. "I know you're...excited...but I don't want you to get your hopes up and think that you'll find the all answers you're looking for in a week. Your parents have been...missing for years. It may take a number of trips before we find anyone who knows what happened to them." He placed his hand on Arnold's back.

Arnold sobered and hunched over, his fingers interlocked. "I know. But, I have the map. No one else ever had the map."

Phil thought. "That's true, but—"

"And I _feel_ like I'll find them. Like everything else before now was the hard part, and now I'm on the easy part...and nothing's wrong with hoping, right?"

"No, no, there isn't. Just be careful. You're mine and Grandma's favorite grandson, y'know. We want you to be careful while you're there—for our sake, y'know."

Arnold nodded. "I know. I will, Grandpa. And I'll come back with them. I promise."

Grandpa fell silent at those words. "I promise," was a means of knowing that there was no way of reasoning with him; his grandson's mind was made up. He, like anyone who had ever met Arnold, knew that Arnold kept his promises to people—he was like his mother that way.

Thoughts of Arnold gone in the same way as his parents were too painful.

So instead of speaking, he just bit into his sandwich solemnly.

* * *

Arnold was the only one in his class still awake on the plane, reading the book of world mythology he'd brought with him when a stirring on his left interrupted his thoughts. Helga, curled up in her seat beside him and cocooned in one of the airplane's blankets, had shifted in her sleep again. She had arrived at school with the rest of the girls a little after he'd been dropped off, telling her dad on the phone to feed her lizard on time before it escaped and roamed the house again. Aside from snapping at Eugene to stop singing, she'd been asleep before takeoff.

He had been hearing things about Helga since the school year started. Good things. Mainly that she, in Sid's words, had gotten "mind-blowingly hot" over the summer. That was the general consensus amongst the school's male population, whenever the topic came up (which was a lot). But personally, he only overheard these conversations about her; he himself never said anything for or against them.

Anybody who saw her knew that she looked a lot like her dad, her nose and her ears and the little cleft in her chin and stuff...She _did_ look a little different from when they were little. He remembered that one time when Grandpa mentioned he had finally "grown into them" or something. Not to mention that time when everybody had freaked out when she came to class without her unibrow in seventh grade. But there wasn't anything exact Arnold could or would point out—if anything, he was just happier that she was generally acting nicer than before.

Although her eyes were this cool shade of blue, like, _royal blue_ or something, and her eyelashes were kinda long.

...He suddenly realized that the reason why he had noticed _those _things were because she was half-awake and looking straight at him. And he hadn't stopped looking at her.

For a second, he thought he had seen her panic, like she suddenly remembered something she had forgotten, but the moment passed. The skin between her eyebrows puckered and her hand, the one with her ribbon wrapped around the wrist, pulled off her blanket. "Can I help you?" She groused, wiping her mouth and grimacing at the streak of scummy lip balm on the back of her hand. Her neck craned above the row of seat to see their sleeping classmates all curled up in their chairs, watching the in-flight movie, or chatting amongst themselves. "Are we there yet?"

"No, we still have a few hours."

She stretched. "How are you still awake? Didn't you get up at three like the rest of us, Football Head?"

He glanced at his book. "Yeah...but, I was, um, reading." He didn't know if she was going to say more or ask him to pass the book over to her.

But she just leaned over to see the page he was on.

"_**The Green-Eyes Creation Myth"**_

"Anything interesting?"

"Sorta. I'm not really reading it; I'm just trying to pass the time."

Helga straightened up and turned to face him fully, brushing her side bangs from her eyes. Arnold faintly noted that her hair had gotten longer and it moved over her shoulders and back in this way that was sorta hard to describe. He realized that he never really saw her mess with it to make it do that; it was more like it fell without effort, almost...perfectly?

"So...I've been meaning to ask. How did you hear about the contest?"

"Oh. Well, I've always wanted to go to San Lorenzo...so, when I looked it up, the institution was there and when I clicked on it, I saw the contest." He was lucky; he had just happened to come up with that excuse on the way to the school that morning.

Helga seemed to consider his words before nodding. She looked up to see the flight attendant coming down their aisle with soda. "Are you actually going to sleep now?"

"No, not yet."

"Well, will you wake me when she actually gets here? She's still too far away."

"Uh, sure."

"Thanks." She flashed him a brief smile, a close-lipped one, before turning her back to him once more.

And missing the look of surprise that crossed his face.

"_Her _smile_? You think she's hot because of her _smile_?" Gerald's face didn't hide the fact he thought Sid was crazy._

"_It wasn't _just _a smile; it was like one of those smiles—I don't know..._models _have or something..." Sid gave a rough exhale at the skeptical glances being throw at him. "C'mon, you guys remember Helga from elementary school. _Helga? _The Helga that was always scowling?_

"_You guys, I swear if you saw it, you'd understand. I know it sounds crazy, but she's cute now, right?" He grinned at the grudgingly offered affirmations. "Well, her smile makes her like, mind-blowingly hot...my brain leaked from my ears..."_

* * *

"ARNOLD & CLASS"

The man holding that sign when the class had come off the runway was tall and dressed in a sweat-stained and wrinkled gray shirt, denim shorts, and construction boots, with Clark Kent glasses that framed his face and five o' clock shadow. Beside him stood a man with salt and pepper hair in khaki pants, cowboy boots, and a buttoned shirt that concealed a stomach that was growing into a beer belly.

"I'm Mr. Simmons of Hillwood High School and this is my class." Mr. Simmons motioned to the students shouldering their bags.

The bespectacled man pulled a large smile and encased Mr. Simmon's pale hand into his tanned, calloused one. "Good to meet you. My name is Dr. Angelo Ramirez." Mr. Simmon's tried to downplay the twinge of pain in his hand. "_Bievenidos a la Republica de San Lorenzo!_ While I am always an archaeologist, for the next week, I will be your guide to this beautiful country.

"This," Dr. Henderson motioned to his companion, "is Senor Hernando Morales. He's from a nearby village and leads the men who work at the site. Alright, we gotta get you all through Customs and into the van; the ride back's gonna be another four hours," He watched the group of high-schoolers pick up their bags and follow him into the airport.

"Enjoy the air conditioning here—there won't be any at the site."

While most of his class had received the phrase "air conditioning," the rest hadn't been missed by Rhonda.

"Wh, what did he mean by that?" Her hand gripped Nadine's arm right at the moment she was holding up her camera. "Nadine, what did he mean by that?"

Nadine tried to wrench her hand free so that she could get her shot of the hawk circling overhead. "Rhonda, Arnold told us we're gonna 'live like archaeologists' for a week, remember? That means we're gonna be in tents or something."

Rhonda's grip got tighter in panic and the bags she was holding suddenly felt heavier. "Absolutely not! I am a Lloyd, Nadine, and Llyods don't—"

"–C'mon, we're gonna fall behind." Nadine stuffed her camera and pushed her friend to join the rest of the students.

"Urgh, I can't believe this! I only brought swimsuits and sunglasses and sunblock and Daddy's card!"

"Well, at least you brought sunblock."

"So," Dr. Ramirez overlooked everyone digging out their passports. "I see the class. Which one of you is Arnold?"

"That's me." Arnold held out his hand.

"Good, good." Dr. Ramirez returned the handshake. " Hernando, this is the one that won the contest."

Sr. Morales gave Arnold a small nod before grabbing a few bags. "_Felicidades._"

"Hernando is a man of little words. But hey, this means that we'll have to keep you close to the action." He gave Arnold an appraising look at his outfit. "Nice, nice...red plaid shirts are the first step in the digger wardrobe. If you're as excited as the guys at the institution made you sound, then you're going to love the site."

* * *

It was only a few hours that Arnold began to realize Dr. Ramierz was right.

The vans had finally gotten off the uneven, potholed roads and pulled up into a grassy plain about the size of a neighborhood block, mostly covered with a thick carpet of grass except for patches of yellow and dirt here and there and a thick fringe of trees and bushes. To his right, Arnold saw the camp site: a few large tents covered in green tarp and framed by wooden picnic tables, a dozen of blue and black barrels for oil and water, and a gathering of tents all surrounded by a large circle where a few logs and ashes were, the camp fire.

And on the left, a large temple, golden-sand colored in the setting sun. He stared at the numerous steps that led to the smaller room at top with the caved-in roof, the crumbling statues and smaller tents with white tarp that sat on its sides. "Whoa..."

At the sight of them, a few workers, dirty and grimy with the day's toils, and women with flowing skirts and faded jeans, made their way to the vans and students, smiling and laughing in a mix of Spanish and English. A few smiled at the sight of Sr. Morales and Dr. Ramierz and others raised a hand in greeting.

He smelled the aroma of meat being cooked and half-listened to the site rules and guidelines Dr. Ramierz said, nonchalantly pointing things out:

"There is a stream there that leads to the river. The showers and latrines are there. You shower with a bucket to save water; you tell at least three people on the site when you go do your business.

"The women of the village will be coming with dinner and to pick up your laundry during your stay. When you see them, help them because they're here just for you.

"Four to a tent: girls with girls; boys with boys. We can all see if this ever becomes otherwise.

"On the other side of the stream is the jungle—don't go there.

"There's not much besides that. Let's eat."

The rest of the evening turned into a celebration of sorts. Eugene and Sheena were trying to learn a few steps to the encouragement of the women from the village; Harold was on his third helping of "arroz y carne" and grilled vegetables; Rhonda sat on one of the logs around the fire, staring at the fire sadly as Nadine flashed pictures; most of the others were gathered around the workers who were strumming their guitars and singing in the night air, their hands and feet setting up the tempo of the music.

"Gerald," Arnold looked up from his plate.

"Yeah," Gerald answered, glad to be free from listening to Sid trying and failing to flirt with one of the girls from the village.

"I'm going to the bathroom. Cover for me."

"Cool...Are you gonna eat that?"

Arnold passed his food and headed away from the campsite until the sounds of everyone laughing and singing joyfully got fainter and fainter.

The temple, for all the weathering and damage it had been through, was just as beautiful up close as it had been on the other side of the field. The half-ruined statues on the steps' either side stood as powerful as ever, despite a missing hand or head and the stony debris gathered at their feet. He stared into one of the excavation holes and glanced at the shadows the ladders, half-turned rocks, and momentarily-abandoned equipment threw in the moonlight.

He looked towards the jungle...

...And swore that in the moonlight he thought he saw someone...move...

No, they didn't just _move_—they _ran_.

Before he could convince himself that running probably wasn't the best thing to do, he was already following across the clearing.

He wanted to yell out Stinky's name, the figure from afar looked that tall. But that would've been wrong.

Because the figure, he suddenly realized, had a head shaped just like his.

Arms pumping wildly and feeling like his feet had stopped touching the ground, the teen followed after, hoping his sneakers could help him catch up. Arnold was a pretty okay runner, but the shock and terrain were getting to him, making him run slower. If he didn't say anything, he was going to lose them. "Hey! Hey, wait! Uh... _¡detenganse!_"

At the brief Spanish, the figure came to a full stop, and Arnold also slowed, trying to absorb all that he could.

The idea of this person having a head like his was a mistake; the shape of his—the fourteen-year-old was close enough now to know that he had been chasing a "him"—the contour of his head was from a headdress of sorts, thin gold plates in the shape of elephant's ears. There were a lot of other things about the person Arnold was trying to grasp—the gold and feather bracelets and anklets, the lanky runner's build, the tattoos etched on his brown arms, chest, legs, and face.

But it was his eyes that grabbed him. Arnold was staring at a pair that were as green as his, practically luminescent in the light.

Arnold could barely speak, he was panting so hard. "_¿Quién es ustedes?_" Arnold whispered, his stomach rolling up into a ball and his heartbeat beating loudly in his ears. His head felt light, like he was dreaming or something.

"Arnold?" At the sound of his name, Arnold looked over his shoulder. What was Helga doing here? He watched as she hunched over her knees, taking in shallow breaths, her eyes flitting from him to the...stranger...and back again. The creases in her brow let him know that he wasn't dreaming, that there _was_ someone here with the same color eyes as his and sorta the same shaped head. "Arnold?"

"_Arnold." _The fourteen-year-old turned at the sound of the voice.

_Did he just say...my name?_

"Arnold...Arnold!"

"Hey, I think I can see someone up there! Arnold!"

All three froze at the voices calling out and the shine of flashlights, but only one made a motion to move. One second, the guy was there—the next, he disappeared into the jungle without a sound.

"There he is, up yonder in the beautiful, yet frightening foliage of the jungle terrain." Stinky.

"Arnold, my word, what are you doing—Helga?" Mr. Simmons turned off his flashlight and approached his students. "Thank goodness we found you. How, why are the two of you on this side of the site? Why didn't you tell anyone you were here?" His voice went from careful relief to suspicion and a sliver of anger.

The two gaped at the sight of their balding teacher and the search party of classmates and workers. Gerald gave Arnold an apologetic stare for getting him in trouble.

Helga's eyes stayed wide but she wasn't saying anything. Her eyes went back to Arnold, waiting for his cue.

"Are they here?" Dr. Ramierz yelled, parting the crowd until he was face-to-face with the formerly missing students. Sr. Morales was in tow, his own flashlight clicking off in the light of the moon.

The archaeologist's presence seemed to jar Arnold from his thoughts. "Uh—sorry! I thought it was okay to come over because, because I wanted to see the temple!"

Helga too seemed to come out of her stupor. "And, and, I guess I...found him first!"

Dr. Ramirez looked between them once more before sighing. "'Don't wander the site after dark.' _That_ was the last rule I should've said, Mr. Simmons. This is my fault entirely; I guess Arnold is much more excited than I thought." He gave a tired smile. "But we're lucky there's no damage done to the two of you. It's getting late; we should all sleep now. You all had a long day and you'll have a crash course in all of this stuff tomorrow." He and his second-in-command turned to the crowd and herded them back towards camp.

Helga began to follow, catching up and falling in step with Phoebe, but not before giving Arnold one more confused glance.

With his heart back in his chest and stomach knot-free, Arnold's sneakers began the walk back to the camp, the shadows of the jungle and temple looming over him. He could feel them full of secrets.

* * *

_a/n: Okay, the first chapter is here! Yay! In interviews that you can find on the __Hey Arnold!__ Wiki, Craig Bartlett mentions that Olga and Principal Wartz also go to San Lorenzo. But adding them in addition to already long list of singular characters' with thoughts and actions is too much—especially as I'm trying to do this with words and not pictures. So, I'm sticking to the main characters and these tiny "scenes/sections" as best as I can._

_The idea of Helga trying to make her feelings clear goes back to "The Things They Cling To." Again, you don't have to read it—although I'd love it if you did—but just know that it has a back story. I hope you don't think that I'm making Helga pretty so that Arnold finally admits he's in love with her. I like Helga a whole lot to do something like that._

_s/n: Dr. Ramirez and Sr. Morales are of my own design and they stem from my thought process that believes there is no way a group of ten-year-olds and their teacher could possibly go to an exotic landscape like San Lorenzo by themselves. _


	3. Chapter 2

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

_**

* * *

Poor Eugene. **_

**

* * *

Chapter 2  
**

* * *

By the next morning, Arnold had a mountain of reasons for why he should maybe, possibly talk to Dr. Ramirez the next morning—an apology for having everyone form a search party, another explanation for why he had been there in the first place, a lie for why he had been so jumpy...a theory about who he had seen with him in the field.

But he was beat to the punch as one of the other archaeologists made it known to him that Dr. Ramierz wanted to see him after lunch. So, after gathering up the dishes and helping clear everything away, he made his way towards the temple, golden-brown in the sun, where the largest white tent stood underneath the shadow of one of the broken statues.

Arnold lifted up the flap. "Uh, Dr. Ramierz?"

"Come in, Arnold, come in!" Dr. Ramierz and Sr. Morales were standing over a long fold-out table covered with maps and tools. They seemed to be researching something. "Hey, just doing some work here! How's your first day going?"

"Pretty okay." It was Sunday, which meant that everyone still had one more day to relax and get used to the site. He had pretty much been spending his time in the man-made square holes getting a closer look at the equipment and the artifacts that had been previously been found. Which was better than spending the day that Eugene was having.

"_Maybe some of us should leave the tent. I'm ever so certain that it just _looks_ bad because we're in a crowded space." Lila offered. It _was_ hot in the tent and there _was_ a lot of shoving, but no one was actually going to move, Lila herself included. They had all seen Eugene in a thousand accidents before, but this one was...different.  
_

"_I don't understand! Eugene, you were fine yesterday night when we were dancing!" Shenna's exclaimed. Her face twisted in frustration at the sight of her friend and when her fingers went to scratch her head, a few tendrils loosened from her braid._

"_Now, Shenna," Mr. Simmons placed a hand on his waif-like student's shoulder, "this is not any one person's fault, we all have a mosquito bite or two." He shook his bottle of calamine lotion roughly._

"_But Mr. Simmons, _look_ at him!" Her hands gestured to the young boy lying on his cot. "It's like he got bit by every mosquito in San Lorenzo! He'll be lucky if he doesn't get malaria!"_

"_I don't think he's going to get malaria. A little calamine lotion wouldn't hurt for the scratching, though." Mr. Simmons began to slather the pink liquid on Eugene's face. It looked like any place where his skin was bare and open had been affected._

"_I'm okay," Eugene said weakly._

"_Of course you are, Eugene, but just to make sure, let's just give you some lotion... You know, I, I might need another bottle." The teacher murmured. _

"Is there something on your mind?"

"Yeah...I just wanted to say sorry again for disappearing from the camp site." His hands squeezed the sides of the journal.

"It's no problem—a little curiosity is healthy. No harm done." Dr. Ramierz gave the fourteen-year-old a smile in understanding before going back to pore over his maps. Sr. Morales did the same, the wrinkles in his face set deeply in thought.

"Um, Dr. Ramierz? When I was at the sight, I think I saw...something."

"Oh?" He replied noncommittally but lifted his head just the same.

"Yeah." Neither of the older gentlemen said anything, so he continued. "While I was looking at the temple, I looked over at the jungle and saw someone running. And so I followed him."

Dr. Ramirez looked up at his visitor and over at his second-in-command before speaking. "Well, Arnold, we've been at this site for awhile; aside from people who come from the village, _we've_ never seen anyone unfamiliar. And you were wandering around in the dark; you could've imagined—"

"—I didn't imagine it. I saw some_one_, a man. He was tall and he wasn't wearing clothes that we wear." Arnold pulled at his t-shirt, the faded lettering of "Go Green" stretching out. "He wore feathers and, and this headdress...and he had green eyes.

"I think," he hesitated for a moment at the stares the two men were sharing (maybe they thought he was crazy), "he was Green-Eyes." Arnold let his admission stand in the air. The sounds from outside seeped their way into the tent, their site guide explaining something and members of his class exclaiming in half-sarcastic voices.

Both the archeologist and his assistant stopped looking at their books and stared at the high-schooler.

"Are you sure?" Sr. Morales spoke now, his voice thick with Spanish.

Arnold nodded.

"No one has ever seen them with their own two eyes. The elders from the village, they make up stories about seeing them. Fishermen and a few travelers claim that they've seen them—but those are rumors, you can tell. And the children run around, acting out the tales they hear. But in the years the village has stood, _no one _from the village has ever seen the Green-Eyed Peoples."

Arnold's hands gripped his journal tighter. His heart was racing the same way it had been last night.

"It wouldn't be so far fetched...This is very serious," Dr. Ramierz murmured with a slight frown. "Arnold," he said louder, "I have been in the archeology business for more than ten years now. There are _ideas_ about the Green-Eyed People, but if you believe that the person you saw was a Green-Eyes, then you would be the first person to see them in almost a decade and the third person to ever see them.

"The last people who ever saw them were—"

"—My parents." He blurted it out before he could stop himself. "My parents were the last people to ever see The Green-Eyes...but no one's seen them...alive either." Arnold paused for a moment. His palms were sweating; he could see the prints on the leather cover. His mouth felt like it was being stuffed full of cotton. He was about to tell two people, two perfect strangers, his entire story. But as he wrung the most important thing he possessed in his hands, he realized that telling could possibly bring him closer to what he wanted. That it could turn a simple field trip at a temple to the journey he wanted. The journey to end all journeys.

"I know about the Green-Eyed people because it was written in this," He held up the journal now. "My dad wrote this while he was in San Lorenzo. It talks about his and my mom's journey in San Lorenzo with the Green-Eyes. At the end of it, he put in a map." Arnold's fingers flipped to the map with familiarity and handed it to Dr. Ramierz.

"I'm excited about coming to the site, I really am. But, I really came to San Lorenzo to find my parents."

The archaeologist took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before looking at the map in front of him. Arnold watched as his eyes soaked in the paper, his mouth gaping open slightly. Sr. Morales moved to do the same, but pulled back at the sight of the map; he looked a bit confused.

Dr. Ramirez's fingers ran over the map. "This is a lot to take in, Arnold. I believe you when you say you are who you are. But, I'm not exactly a jungle explorer...this is a little far out of my league." He stared up and saw the young boy's look of slight dejection, the slight posture of defeat. He hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "Can, can you give me a moment to look at this? I promise that I'll give it back to you and have something to say by tonight the earliest." Dr. Ramirez moved back to the table, his fingers leafing through the pages of a particularly huge text.

Arnold didn't want to let the journal and the map go so easily, but would have to accept the promise of its safe return. He nodded once and headed out the tent.

* * *

"Helga...Helga? Are you okay?" Phoebe's face was perplexed. Helga had returned from the tents around the temple but hadn't said anything. They knew better than to talk about "ice cream" until they were relatively alone, but the look on her best friend's face was worrying. It didn't help that Arnold had come walking by ten minutes later with the same listless expression on his face. At least a dramatic look meant that something was being considered; no look meant nothing was going on!

"Helga!" Phoebe's hands gripped her shoulders and her t-shirt and shook her gently.

"Huh? Uh...yeah, Pheebs?" The tall blonde looked over at her best friend, snapping out of her stupor. She blinked like it was the first time she was seeing Phoebe today.

"Was _it_ that bad?" Phoebe whispered and leaned in.

Helga knew she had two seconds before Phoebe started to freak out on her. "Huh? No, no...I was going to catch him outside of the tent, but...I forgot what I was going to say." Her mouth set in a firm line and her forehead creased in thought.

"Your nerves again?" Phoebe offered, letting the fabric and her go.

"Yeah. Maybe I'll try again...later."

* * *

"...And to this day, that is why you should never pass by the dumpster behind Tony's at night..." Harold finished, twitching his fingers menacingly.

Gerald rolled his eyes. "The only thing that story did was make me want more salsa verde." He tapped his fork to his plate. It had been his suggestion for everyone to go around with a story that they had, but after Rhonda's sour mood and that bad story from Harold, he was ready to call it quits for the night.

"Well, _you_ say something!" Harold mumbled, finding his place on the log again.

"I _can't. _The one who was The Keeper-"

"Blah blah blah. If you're not gonna speak up, then shut up before I pound you!"

"You can walk over here and try that if you want, Bubba-"

"_I_ have a story," Dr. Ramirez said above the tense boys. His appearance had been noting but genial, but the firelight casting shadows under his eyes gave him enough menace to set the mood. His voice captured the attention of the teenagers—_anything _was better than "The Haunted Dumpster." "How well do you know mythology?"

A few murmurs rose. They had gotten Greek Mythology at full-blast in seventh grade, nothing to big-"Echo and Narcissus" this, "Perseus and the Sea Monster" that...

"_Latin_ Mythology?"

Everyone fell silent. They didn't know that.

"There are a lot of mythological stories about the Mayans, but I'm sure you've never heard anything about The Green-Eyed People."

"The Green-Eyed People?" A few asked.

Arnold almost choked on his water. Dr. Ramirez had kept to his promise to return the journal safely, but not before saying that he had a found a way to help him.

_"I have something in mind, Arnold. Nothing too big that requires you to do anything much...I won't say when, but you'll know..."_

The high school boy accepted that at the time, but this kind of talk kinda worried Arnold. He hadn't asked for silence on the matter of his parents. What was he doing?

"They are one of the most secretive, most mysterious peoples of the world. It's said that even today, they stick to the traditions and ways of thinking that were created thousands of years ago. It's so rare to find anything of theirs; to do so is considered a great triumph in the archeological community.

"Like," his voice became a bit smug, "the temple you see across from you..."

Everyone's eyes flitted to the other side of the field. The temple, with its dilapidated cave, seemed to stand proudly overhead, framed by the moon.

"They own a very interesting creation myth." Dr. Ramirez put his plate on the ground and placed his hands on his knees sagely. "Would you like to hear it?"

"Uh, heck _yeah_!" Curly.

"It is said that the Alom, the King-Father Creator, is responsible for the birth of the world. That he flattened his very head to make the world and took his hair to create the jungle despite the pain it caused. His scalp became the dirt, his tears became the rivers, his blood became clay, and his cries of pain formed the night sky.

"However, it is Anka, the Queen-Mother Creator, who is responsible for our very existence. When she looked upon Alom in his pain and sadness, she was so moved that she offered him her very heart and planted it in his mind, and that act of love inspired the world itself into the way it is today. From the spot where it touched came the crops, and the animals, and the Green-Eyed People themselves. Anka recognized the Green-Eyed People as the greatest of all the creations and therefore, gave them the responsibility of keeping her heart safe. She even resurrected a city made especially for their duty.

"It is believed that Anka's heart, La Corazon, truly exists and is protected by The Green-Eyes; that their responsibility is why no one has ever seen them. It is that sacred, that beautiful, that amazing."

He smiled at the sounds of awe that came from his audience; Gerald nodded his head in appreciation.

"I say that to ask this: what would you say if I said that I think I have found a way to the hidden city?"

The chatter that this news caused rose as expected. Some looked amongst themselves for confirmation of their beliefs and others looked at the archaeologist with skepticism; even a few fellow archaeologists and workers had the same looks on their faces. Sr. Morales looked up with a trace of something on his weathered face.

"Really?"

"I believe that I have stumbled upon something! A map of a piece of uncharted terrain in San Lorenzo's jungle! I believe the map I've found is a path to the The Green-Eyes' hidden city!"

"Really?"

"Really."

Arnold perked up and so did half of his English class.

"Boy howdy!"

"That's ever so exciting!"

"Yes, yes! It is said that the city is in the jungle's thicket, magicked to hide your shoulders and fly on wings, beautiful in the rising sun, chilling in the moonlight. As an archaeologist, this would be a most exciting discovery; even the path leading to it must have temples and monuments that no one has ever seen with their own two eyes. Just to see them would be like having Christmas everyday for a year." He looked at the students and grinned.

"I know this seems to be on 'the spur of the moment'...and would go against what you originally came here for, but this is just too exciting of an opportunity to pass up... And I'm sure you could appreciate it in the same way I would...would you all be opposed to us going on a journey with me, into the jungle, and exploring this land?"

Silences never lasted long with this class.

"Double heck yeah!"

"There'd be so much to study!" Phoebe.

"The jungle's got to have the coolest bugs!" Nadine.

"That would be the coolest thing ever!" Harold.

"I'm game." Eugene.

"Class, class, settle down!" Mr. Simmons called for a halt before things got out of hand. "Dr. Ramirez's offer is very exciting and I'm sure we would all benefit from such a special excursion, but, but, I don't believe that this would be very safe. We're unfamiliar with the jungle; for some of us, this is our first outdoor experience."

"You got that right." Rhonda groused.

"But maybe you'd see something cool, too, Rhonda. Like...ancient jew-el-ry." Nadine slid in.

Rhonda chewed over her words. "I guess it'd be an improvement from..._this._" Her eyes rolled. "But only _if_ jewelry is involved."

"We cannot go into the jungle unprotected." Mr. Simmons said.

"Mr. Simmons, I can assure you that you and your students would not be unprotected. The journey under any other circumstance could take weeks to make, but I am simply suggesting a few days of your trip. And I can assure you that no one is more knowledgeable of the jungle than Sr. Morales and his men."

Sr. Morales nodded his head slightly. "I have lived near this jungle for my entire life. My men and I and would not let any harm come to yourself or the children."

"I'm...still not sure."

"Mr. Simmons!" Arnold stood up now. "I know that you're scared for us and everything, but this is a once in a lifetime thing! We might never have the chance to do this again! We should go!" Arnold's words sparked the conversation once more.

"I think so, too, Mr. Simmons!" Helga stood up from her side of the fire. Her eyes swept over the entire gathering before landing on Arnold's. She kept her face neutral even as Arnold glanced at her with a confused expression.

Mr. Simmons didn't try to hide his eyebrows raised in surprise. "Well, Helga, it's very interesting that you would take an interest in this..and Arnold, this _is_ your trip...so, if you want to go to San Lorenzo, I suppose it would be alright."

"Then it's settled!" Dr. Ramirez yelled above the cheering students. "We leave early tomorrow to get started. Our path starts there." His pointed into the dark jungle.

* * *

The way Arnold looked at her when she whirled him around made Helga feel like he had been half-expecting her. She was a little excited about it but now really wasn't the time to act like a girl.

She gave Gerald the nastiest look she possessed until he got the hint and dragged Arnold to the edges of the tent site. Her head felt kinda light and her hand was breaking out in a sweat, but now really _really _wasn't the time to act like a girl. "Okay, Football Head. I _know_ what I saw last night and I _know_ that whatever it was, it's inside the jungle. So tell me why I lied for your butt just now instead of telling Dr. Ramirez what I saw?" Her fingers gripped his shirt.

Arnold looked at her for a good long second. Her jaw was clenched, a total opposite from the day before and one that caught his attention. He made a motion to take a step back from her, but realized that she still had a death grip on him. When she followed his glance, she let him go like his t-shirt was made of lava.

She really had to control herself.

"Okay, let's make this simple. Arnold, what did we see last night?" She whispered.

He hesitated for a moment, but then, "We saw a Green-Eyes."

Her brow furrowed. "You mean, 'a Green-Eyes' from that story?"

"Yeah, and from my book from yesterday on the plane."

She looked taken aback for a moment. "Why would _we_ see a Green-Eyes?"

Like earlier, Arnold hesitated at telling Helga everything he had told Dr. Ramirez. He knew Helga: her reading the title of a story in a book was one thing and her seeing an actual Green-Eyes was another thing, but her knowing the amount of importance he put on what he'd seen yesterday was a stretch. She was nicer now, but he knew that the biggest risk in telling her would give her the excuse to think that he was crazy. Or give her the excuse to insult him.

_Then again..._

A big part of him felt he _should_ tell her. Helga had known him for much longer than Dr. Ramirez. That meant that he should be willing to tell her the truth just as quickly as he had told the archaeologist...right? And she was well aware that he tended not to lie about things. Even now, her blue eyes looked at him like she _expected_ the truth from him. It couldn't really hurt to tell her. ...And part of him realized that he _did_ want to tell her

Maybe breaking the rules was affecting his state of mind.

Helga was thrown off-balance when she felt the light pressure of Arnold's hands on her shoulders. "Gerald knows, but you can't tell anybody."

The way he said that made the pucker of skin between her eyebrows disappear. The only reason why she had dragged from everyone was to make him confirm that he had told Dr. Ramirez that that guy in the field last night was a Green-Eyes. But obviously, there was more to the story than she had thought. "O...okay."

"Okay. I've known about the Green-Eyed People since before tonight. See, I was born here in San Lorenzo. My parents, my mom and dad, they used to do work here for villages and stuff—they were an archaeologist and a doctor. They're the only people to ever see the Green-Eyes; they even helped the Green-Eyes fight a sleeping sickness. They were the only ones the Green-Eyed People trusted and when I was one, the Green-Eyes asked them to come back to San Lorenzo. So they left me at my grandpa and grandma's...and never came back.

"I don't know why we saw a Green-Eyes, but I realized yesterday that it's really important for me to see one because, because I'm here to find out what happened to my mom and dad."

Neither spoke for a few long beats. The murmuring of their classmates getting settled to sleep was to be expected, but somebody in the camp was already snoring and they could hear the crickets chirping.

"So," Helga began slowly, "you think that if you find the Green-Eyes' hidden city, you'll find your parents?"

"I think...I think if I find them, maybe they can tell me where I can find my parents. Because maybe they're there with them." Arnold's hands didn't leave Helga's shoulders.

Arnold felt a big puff of air hit his face. "Okay." Helga sighed.

"Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay. If you think that the Green-Eyes know where your parents are, then we need to try hard to find them. Because that guy ran really, really fast."

_"We?" _"You believe me?"

"Yeah...only you could have a life story like that."

"And you'll help me?"

"Sure. I mean, I guess Dr. Ramirez said that because he really thinks he'll see statues and stuff, but we're all really here for you. So that means we're supposed to help you find your parents even if almost everyone in class doesn't know it. Besides, do you really think _Geraldo_ is gonna be any help?"

Arnold was too shock to speak. Without thinking, he gave Helga a tight hug, pressing her to him as close as possible.

Helga could feel her head popping off her shoulders and floating into the stratosphere. Her face had to be the color of tomatoes. To say she was "disappointed" when he let go in his haste was an understatement.

"Thanks, Helga." He gave her a smile.

"Yeah."

They walked back into the rest of the camp and maybe he said goodnight to her...it wasn't like she was fully aware of her surroundings. It was a wonder how she had been able to get back to her own tent without tripping or fainting or something like that. Her body sunk to the ground. It didn't matter that the dew that was already on the ground dampened the seat of her pants almost immediately; she had a lot to take in.

Arnold's parents were the topic of a lot of wonder for her. She remembered once when she had overheard him and Geraldo talking about them "never coming back," but she had always figured they were dead. That was why his parents were about the only thing she never teased him about (And _why _would she? It wasn't like _her _mom and dad were "Parents of the Year").

There had been moments after that when she spent her time thinking about what they had looked like. They had probably been impossibly nice and really handsome together. And now, she had more things to add to her fantasies: _Indiana Jones_ types that ventured into crazy situations with crazy gadgets at their disposal, stealing precious ingredients from grizzly characters and handing them to the friendly, mysterious natives. It was like something you could only find in a cartoon show or something...

Finding his parents would be the most important thing to happen in Arnold's entire life. "Which means," she murmured, "by proxy, this is the most important thing to happen in _my _life."

If she found them for him, it could possibly be even better than simply telling him that she loved him. Actions were more powerful than words after all.

But even before that...

_I__'m dedicated to anything that makes you happy, my love...My all is going to go into this. I promise._

She wrapped her arms around herself and shuffled inside her tent. Not even Rhonda's bitching could mess with her mood.

_

* * *

_

_a/n: The second chapter is here! Whoo! R&R!  
_

_There isn't a lot I want to say about this. La Corazon is from "The Journal" episode, of course, but the story of its origins and the Green-Eyes creation myth are of my own design. The story I created was longer, but I scaled it down here to just the bare facts. "Alom" and "Anka" are deities from Mayan mythology as decreed by Wikipedia. _

_I want to get into the ArnoldxHelga pairing ASAP, but I feel like I should let this move at a moderate pace. Like I said before, I don't want Arnold to think, "Oh Helga's so pretty, I'm in love," and I don't want Helga to be so strongly canon. I want my 14 yr. old Helga to be as in love as she is in the show, but mature enough with herself and her affection and thoughts.__  
_

_Gerald refusing to tell a Legend draws back to "The Things They Cling To" where I created a chapter where he passes his title as The Keeper of The Urban Legends to his sister Timberly.  
_

_s/n: I am open to constructive criticism, but not flaming-and there is a difference. If I have put something in my work that is wrong, and am told what and how I can fix it/make it better, that is constructive criticism. However if all I receive are insults, that is flaming. I do not like flaming, I do not respond well to flamers, and if you flame me, I definitely respond with the same tone.  
_


	4. The GreenEyes' Creation Myth

_**This was supposed to be the scene right before Arnold & Co. arrived to San Lorenzo. It's supposed to be my set-up for ArnoldxHelga/The Green-Eyed People, but as I was working on it, I realized it didn't really work for me because there was so much and after three rewrites, I decided to scrape my original idea and recycle parts of it for "The Saturdays" chapter. However, I kept the section I was planning in its original form and here it is just for you. Enjoy~**_

**Arnold and Helga's Plane Ride/The Creation of The Green-Eyes**

Arnold was the only one in his class awake on the plane, reading the book of world mythology he'd brought with him when a stirring on his left interrupted his thoughts. Helga, curled up in her seat and cocooned in one of the airplane's blankets, had shifted in her sleep again. She had arrived at school little after he'd been dropped off, telling her dad to feed her lizard on time before it escaped and roamed the house again. Aside from snapping at Eugene to stop singing, she'd been asleep before takeoff.

He had been hearing things about Helga since the school year started. Good things. Mainly that she, in Sid's words, had gotten "mind-blowingly hot" over the summer. That was the general consensus amongst the school's male population, but he only overheard these conversations about her; he himself never said anything for or against them.

She _did_ look a little different. Anybody who saw her knew that she looked a lot like her dad, her nose and her ears and the little cleft in her chin and stuff (although there was that one time he remembered Grandpa saying that it looked like she had finally "grown into them" or something). Not to mention that time when everybody had freaked out in seventh grade when she came to class without her unibrow. But there wasn't anything exact Arnold could or would point out—if anything, he was just happier that she was generally acting nicer than before.

Although her eyes were this cool shade of blue, like, _royal blue_ or something, and her eyelashes were kinda long.

...He suddenly realized that the reason why he had noticed _those _things were because she was looking at him and he hadn't stopped looking at her.

For a second, he thought he had seen her panic, like she was trying to remember something she had forgotten, but the moment passed. The skin between her eyebrows puckered and her hand, the one with her ribbon wrapped around the wrist, brushed away her bangs from her eyes. "Can I help you?" She wiped her mouth and grimaced at the streak of scummy lip balm on the back of her hand before craning her neck to see their sleeping classmates. "Are we there yet?"

"No, we still have a few hours." He sat in silence as she stretched; she was wearing a pretty cool t-shirt today.

"How are you still awake? Didn't you get up at three like the rest of us, Football Head?"

He glanced at his book. "Yeah...I was, um, reading."

"Really? Let me see." He handed her the book and watched as she made herself comfortable in her chair once more. Her hair slipped over her shoulder and fell over her eye before she brushed it away. A tiny voice in his head wondered if her hair always did that...fall over her shoulders like that.

"What're the Green-Eyes?"

He was happy for the distraction. "They're an ancient people of San Lorenzo. I heard about them once and started reading some of their mythology." He didn't say anything more, just looked around as she went back to the page, a lock of hair wrapped around her index finger in concentration.

"_**The Creation Myth of the Green-Eyes"**_

"_**It isn't hard to understand why most scholars who believe that they know something about the Green-Eyed People, better recognized as "The Green-Eyes," believe the theory that their descent from the Mayans is true. After all, Alom and Anka, respectively the parent deities of fertility/childbirth and creation originate from Mayan mythology, not to mention the last Green-Eyed temple, discovered in 1996, bears their name and supposed imagines on the walls. However, the similarities end there and based on what has been deciphered from that temple's weathered walls, the opposite belief is beginning to hold true. The following is another version of the creation myth, one more likely for the Green-Eyes to believe in.**_

"_**In the past before today, there were no people and there was no world. Only Alom and Anka, in their loneliness, existed standing with their backs facing each other; there was no reason for them to turn to the other and they stood as if they were statues, wholly unaware of the other.**_

"_**One day in his loneliness, Alom, dark and beautiful, decided to create a companion for himself. He lifted his hand and began to beat his head, hitting himself harder and harder until it is said that he wept from the pain. However, he did not stop his toils until the very shape of his head became an oblong shape. The process, while imperfect and the cause of great pain, was beneficial as the lumps that remained became mountains; his scalp became land; his hair became 'black vegetation'; and when he touched the blood with his wet fingers, he created the rivers and the red clay found in their banks. It was in that moment that the world was formed and Alom became The King-Father Creator.**_

"_**However, as his efforts brought forth no companion, he continued striking his head and pulling away at the black vegetation until pieces of his skull began to stick out. The black vegetation, now matted and knotted, became the dark jungle and the lumps and clotted blood became San Lorenzo's volcanoes. His cries began to fill in the space he had been in, emitting a haze so black and terrible that it thickened and became the night sky.**_

"_**His emotion somehow began to attract the attention of Anka, green-eyed and beautiful, and she finally turned around to see Alom. Even in his pain and sadness, Anka was struck by the beauty and sadness found within Alom. It is believed that the sight of him and his torment moved her so badly and sympathetically that she too struck her chest until she producing her very heart, stuffing it into his very mind. For the Green-Eyes, it is believed that this was the first gesture of love in the universe and the birth of Anka as The Queen-Mother Creator.**_

"_**This act of love involving Anka's heart was the greatest thing to happen for the world, for Alom forgot his torment and made Anka his. They created the first of their children, the first , gold and beautiful, and the second pale and beautiful. These children were called 'The Sun,' the one responsible for 'day rain' and the clouds, and 'The Moon,' the one responsible for 'night rain' and the Milky Way.**_

"_**And Anka's heart, placed within Alom's mind, was the greatest thing for creation: 'green vegetation,' became green and Animals and Man and Woman were created and functioned much in the same way they do today. The Green-Eyes believe that while Alom and Anka looked upon all with love, Man and Woman were the better of the gifts as their offspring held Anka's eyes and Alom's intellect, and so, were awarded with Anka's heart and told to keep it safe as it was the most sacred of all things placed on this planet... **_

"_**This piece is only one part of the puzzle about the Green-Eyes, but if it does nothing else, it shows that the they are an innovative and creative people. Only time will tell if efforts will produce more windows into the life of this mysterious race."**_

Helga handed Arnold back his book. "Impressive. Is this why you entered into that contest?"

"Yeah."

"Only you, Football Head." She looked up to see the flight attendant coming down their aisle with soda. "Are you actually going to sleep now?"

"No, not yet."

"Well, will you wake me when she actually gets here?"

"Uh, sure."

"Thanks." She flashed him a smile, close-lipped one, before turning her back to him once more.

And missing the look that crossed his face.

"_Her _mouth_? You think she's hot because of her _mouth_?" Gerald's face didn't hide the fact he thought Sid was crazy._

"_Not just her mouth—her smile. It was like one of those smiles—I don't know..._models_ have or something..." Sid gave a rough exhale at the skeptical glances being thrown at him. "You guys, I swear, Helga's, like, mind-blowingly hot. If you saw the smile I saw her flash, you'd understand; my brain leaked from my ears..." _


	5. Chapter 3

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

It only took one look at Curly to know that it was _way _too early in the morning.

"I just wanna know how long all that took," Gerald commented. He stood up for the moment, throwing the last folded tarp into a pile with the others.

Phoebe followed suite. Her fingers pulled at her shirt from where it had pulled down a little too low in her work. "_I_ just wanna know how long it took him to find that color; it actually matches with those trees over there."

They knew that it was best not to pay attention to Curly's antics, especially when he wore body paint, but it was really really hard this time for two reasons: (a) every single inch of Curly's upper torso, face, and legs was colored Crayola "jungle green" and (b) they also knew that his trademark pose—the Superman one with the glare on his glasses—meant he wasn't going to leave until _somebody_ asked what he was doing.

"Curly," Gerald began, assuming the required role, "where're your bags?"

The trip into the jungle meant that there were a lot of things to do to get ready: some of the men from the village were in a huddle, sharpening their machetes; some of the class were packing the bags with food and survival kits and some others were filling up the canteens near the stream; he, Phoebe, and a few others were part of the group folding up the extra tarp and rolling sleeping bags.

He glanced at Arnold standing off to the side with Dr. Ramirez, his dad's journal in hand, before turning back to his classmate.

Curly stared around at the site before letting his own gaze land back on Gerald's tall, lean frame. The fact that Gerald was pinching the bridge of his nose didn't bother him. "I don't need a bag. This is the perfect time for me to practice some guerrilla warfare tactics. I'm going all-in on this baby." The pearly grin he bared seemed menacing in contrast to his skin. "I just hope the shorts don't take away from the overall effect." He didn't wait for Gerald's answer, just continued on his way.

Phoebe shook her head slightly. "At least he's not sneaking animals out of the zoo again."

"_I _just hope he keeps his pants on."

* * *

"_I know that this is a big moment for you, Arnold. That's why I want you to be in charge of mapping out our trip in the way you think is best." Dr. Ramirez turned away from the rest of the camp and tapped the journal with his finger, his looking above the frame of his glasses and meeting with the fourteen-year-old's. "You're the one with the map best suited for this trip. It only makes sense for us to follow your lead."_

The trip inside the jungle had started off pretty well. For all of Dr. Ramirez's warnings when they had first arrived, the jungle wasn't so bad. The men from the village led the way for the most part, chopping away with machetes and pulling away at stray vines and warning the others when there was an inclination or a log embedded into the ground. For the most part, the students spent most of their time looking up at the canopy of trees pointing out a random bird or the movement of a monkey.

"_Hot dang!" Stinky whooped as he, Sid, and Harold lingered in the back of the group, a little ways in front of Sr. Morales. "A trip through the mysterious and haunting jungle interior. And with our classmate Arnold leading our path, this trip is going to be like an afternoon in a hammock."_

"_Yeah, man, it's gonna be cake." _

"_Yessire, there is nothing is going to make this trip bite."_

Of course, their fascination had lasted about an hour, maybe two at the most.

"_This trip really bites!" Stinky swatted at another branch or cluster of gnats in his path. "We've been walking forever! How long has it been since we started?"_

"_Three hours."_

"_Aww, gee." _

The third hour seemed to be the worst for them. The moment Nadine yelled out for a few minutes to change her camera batteries, the morale of the group dropped. Rhonda had reached her limit of freaking out at the number of vines that seemed to be swung towards her face, Harold had had enough of being ignored when asked what time they were going to break for lunch, and Sid kept wiping his boot heels from the mud caking on them. About the only person who wasn't really complaining was Curly...Of course, it wasn't like anyone could hear him since he was so high up...

...or even _see _him for that matter.

Of course, there wasn't much Arnold was doing to keep morale up. Except for a glance up here or there from the map, he hadn't been paying much attention to make things better. There wasn't much for him to worry about in terms of tripping and falling; Helga seemed to catch every low/fallen/broken/random twig and vine that appeared before his path, stepping or breaking them herself before he reached them or guiding him to the left or right with a nudge of her hand.

"It's weird right where you are. Lift your foot up."

Arnold complied, a brief smile on his lips to express his gratitude.

There was a probably a list somewhere of how many times they had ended up being each others' partner in elementary school and something going wrong because of it. Usually their partnership involved a strange set of circumstances that had a one-in-a-million chance of happening to someone else, but Arnold had been half-expecting it this time. Gerald was never known for turning Phoebe down when she asked him to help her or join her on something and their working together so closely that morning, it was expected that his usual right hand was gone.

Maybe it was because they hadn't really been partners much after sixth grade, but partnering with Helga wasn't so bad this time. Arnold figured that she was being so silent because she realized he wanted to concentrate. She didn't complain about at her sneakers getting dirty or the heat that everyone else seemed to be whining about. She had even volunteered to hold his canteen when it kept slipping off his shoulder. And then there was her clearing the path for him.

...Plus, the few times he _did_ look up from the map, glancing over at Helga seemed to make him feel the same way he had when she had smiled at him on the plane. It gave him a funny feeling in his stomach. He wasn't exactly sure why...but he didn't think it was a _bad_ feeling.

"Okay." Helga stepped back a few inches to give him leeway to her command. "Which way am I supposed to go?"

"What?" He looked up at the jungle in confusion. They seemed to have stopped in a place where the jungle and its foliage wasn't as thick as what they had been encountering; Arnold peered up at the trees behind Helga and to the right, where the trail continued.

His green eyes landed on Helga. In the time of his studying the map, he had missed the point when Helga had whipped out her ribbon and tied it around her hair in a simple knot. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just tell me which way—"

"URGH!" A _thud _reached their ears. "AAAAaarrrggggHHH!"

"Wait." Her chin lifted to for him to look behind them before rolling her eyes.

Arnold followed her glance to see that they were further ahead than everyone else. He and Helga had gotten through a patch of exposed tree roots and fallen branches with no problem, but the same couldn't be said for everyone if looking at some of their classmates was any indication.

Actually, any situation that caused Rhonda's hip to jut out like that was always a bad one.

Dr. Ramirez was talking to her, his hand gesticulating with his words. It was clear the man was asking for peace.

"...a little fall, Rhonda. You got up okay, you're standing up okay. You look okay."

"I _look_ okay?" Rhonda shrilled, her face tight. "I do NOT 'look okay!' _Look_ at me, look at what happened to me when I tripped just now!" She yanked her clothes in emphasis. Rhonda had a streak of dirt right down the middle of her flimsy, flower printed shirt. "This is a Diane von Frustenberg kaftan!"

"Who cares about that?" Sid snapped. "I almost lost my boots in the dirt right now! I was almost barefoot for a second!"

"And I'm still hungry!"

A few of the village men had to turn away from the three to keep themselves composed, wiping the sheen of sweat off their faces with kerchiefs and bandanas and coughing. They spoke in rapid Spanish, chuckling in between their words.

"Class! I know that you all are very unused to this kind of exertion, but that is no reason to be rude to Dr. Ramirez." Mr. Simmons said. The straw hat the teacher was wearing hadn't stopped the sweat from running down his face and neck. "I'm very disappointed in your lack of patience. About the only people I haven't heard complain are Nadine and Curly."

"Mr. Simmons," Rhonda began, "that is because Nadine is a weirdo."

"Shut up." Nadine walked over now. "I'm not the one who brought a silk shirt to the jungle. Plus, you're wearing _my _shorts! You're just mad I told you that I wasn't going to carry your bags for you because I was taking pictures of spiders."

"See what I mean? A weirdo."

"And you can't even _see_ Curly! He's _green_!" Harold yelled.

"I'm the master of disguise! I'm Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca! Bow before me!" Curly cackled from somewhere above their heads.

"Mr. Simmons, Mr. Simmons," Dr. Ramirez put in. "It's okay. I, too, believed that this trip was to start off fairly easily, but I've underestimated the terrain thus far. San Lorenzo's rainy season comes with a lot of rain and, at times, erosion occurs within the jungle. That might explain the frequency of tree roots and mud some of your students have encountered.

"The men won't show it, but they are becoming tired themselves." Sr. Morales walked over. "Maybe it is best if we stop here for now, Angelo."

"We'll do that. Let's break for half an hour or so, everyone. Don't go out too far."

With a general sigh of relief amongst the group, most of the class began to find safe places to sit on the jungle floor and unwrap the food being passed around.

Arnold closed the journal for the moment and did the same, using his bag as a chair. He took his cap off for the moment and and scratched his scalp roughly. Helga placed her bag down and handed him his canteen. "How far have we gotten?"

"Almost five miles...I don't know if that's good or not since we don't exactly know where we're going. But Dr. Ramirez says the temple was actually in a pretty deep part of the jungle."

Helga didn't have anything to say to that, so she just nodded in understanding as she lifted her canteen to her lips. She frowned as the quaff she hoped for ended too quickly. "Are you serious?"

"Helga, are you out of water?" Eugene asked. "Let me find the big jug and fill that up for you."

"Eugene, it's fine, the stream's right—" Her argument fell on deaf ears as Eugene grabbed the container out of her hand. Sometimes it was best not to mess with Eugene when he was set on helping with something. Plus he'd gone a little while without tripping and eating it; he was about due.

"Ahh!" They watched as Eugene fumbled along the somewhat flat terrain, careened forward, and fell on his own accord.

"It's almost sad how predictable that is." Helga murmured.

Arnold fought the smirk that was pulling at the corner of his mouth. A "jinx" or not, Eugene was still a hurt friend. "Eugene, are you okay?"

"I'm okay. But, I think I tripped on something."

"Yeah. They're called 'your own two feet,' Eugene." Helga quipped.

"No," He checked to see if he had any scratches on his body. "I think it was something else." The young boy pulled himself off the ground and rubbed his hand on the ground.

Arnold and Helga rose to walk over to their clumsy classmate and knelt down.

"There's something here." Arnold sat on his haunches, rubbing where Eugene had started. His fingertips went over a particular spot, shifting the dirt away until his hands felt something, kinda cool and smooth. Underneath his palm felt the same and he began to brush away the dirt and leaves until he realized what he was looking at.

It was a smooth slab of stone...

...no, no it was more than that...

It was a flat slab of smooth stone about the width of Arnold's palm, half-sunken into the ground. Arnold's fingers brushed against it; it wasn't..._jagged _enough to be a regular stone. _Huh?_

"What is that?" Arnold heard a murmur. He looked up to see Dr. Ramirez bent over the slab, his fingernails wedging it free from the dirt and turning it over in his hands. The archaeologist stood up to stretch out his legs, the pad of his thumb brushing the caked dirt off.

"It seems, young explorer, that you have stumbled upon something important: your first archaeological find. This is an ornament, specifically a necklace of the Green-Eyes. He held it up to Arnold's eyes.

It had been carved into, a circle of lines and grooves and dots all connecting and cutting off that held unto the dirt that had covered it. But there was no denying it; whatever he was looking at was in the shape of a large, half-lidded eye.

"This thicket of the jungle is dense and uncharted enough to be ideal Green-Eyed territory—finding this proves that much. I truly expect there to be a lot more of discoveries like this if we look hard enough." He glanced over his shoulder at Nadine snapping a picture.

"I also don't know why it would be here when there are no other clues of a larger structure that could or would cause someone to come here...It _could_ be the survivor of someone that was here long ago...but there aren't signs of weathering..." His nail picked at a bit of a dirt in a groove.

Arnold's composure in the face of Dr. Ramirez didn't hide the fact that his body was in a cold, excited sweat underneath his t-shirt. He looked away from the stone and his classmates clamoring around it and up into the fringe of trees.

"Dr. Ramirez, do you think we're close?"

"I have no idea." Dr. Ramirez smiled. "Do you?"

"No, but what about the grooves? What if we took the dirt out? Do you think that would tell us something?"

"Maybe..." Dr. Ramirez mused, "in any case, we've found something." Arnold felt the light pressure of Dr. Ramirez's hand pressing the ornament in his palm as he addressed the larger congregation. "Okay everyone! We've found something pretty important. I'm thinking it wouldn't be a good idea to move forward until we figure something out, so why don't we call this headquarters for the night? There was a pretty good clearing about fifteen yards back, remember, Hernando? We can set up up camp there..."

* * *

"Okay, I get that that thing Arnold found is important, but why does _he_ get to sit and study it while _we_ have to pick up the wood for the fire?" Sid griped.

"Yeah!" Harold broke a branch with his foot before picking it up. "Stupid branches."

"Aw fellers, walking through the jungle for logs is easier than all that walking we was doing. And it's not like what we have to do is hard; we got the easiest job of all." Stinky reasoned. The other two murmured in agreement. "Plus, we've got Sr. Morales."

The older gentleman, casually leaning against the trunk of a tree, looked up at the sound of his name and nodded. He hadn't said anything to the boys, just moved with them as they continued with their task. His hand never left the handle of this machete placed in his belt loop.

Stinky glanced at his bunch before picking up a few more. "Hey, fellers, how many branches is enough?"

"Enough that we don't have to do this again."

"Hey guys," Harold yelled out, stepping into a pretty big bush. "I say screw picking up any more sticks...do you think vines burn the same way?" He pulled at a few of the thick ones hanging on a low branch before him.

"Maybe," Sid hollered back, walking over to the bush. "Gimme some." He glanced over the larger boy's shoulder as he pulled at a particularly strange colored one. He stared for just a little while before his skin paled with realization. "I, I don't think that that...vine you're pulling at is a good one."

Harold's hand paused in his yanking and straightened up, looking over at. "Why not? I just got it out. This one's pretty good even though it's really small...Hey," Harold finally took a good look at his friend's chalky face, "what's the matter?"

"I think it's..._wiggling_..." Sid whispered. He swallowed hard and pointed his finger, "...in, in your hand."

"'Wiggling?'" Harold's looked over at the vine and squinted, losing his own color. "You mean like a—"

"_SNAKE! OH MY _GOD_, HAROLD, YOU'RE HOLDING A SNAKE!_" Sid screeched as Harold dropped it to the ground. It wasn't as big as his arm, but the way it thrashed around, hissing open-mouthed like that, was intimidating enough. The two dropped their collection of sticks, yelling and screeching as the snake slithered toward them.

"Get out of there!" There was a yank on their shirts as Sr. Morales ran over and pulled them out of the bush. He pulled out his machete and his cowboy boots set to work, kicking a few branches free and separating the bush. He shook his weapon at the snake, harried Spanish pouring out of his mouth. The boys stood in fear as they watched the snake rise and hiss at the older man before launching itself at him. They cringed as the snake's open mouth bit the tip of his shoe.

"Wilikers! It's trying to spread its poison into Sr. Morales' body!"

"Literally!"

Sr. Morales lifted his hand to quiet the teens and gave his hand one of the most minute shakes. "If we were in any other circumstance," Sr. Morales addressed the animal, "you and I would not have crossed paths." Sr. Morales turned over his foot, pinning the snake underfoot. His breathing was harsh as he watched the snake's tail whip and thrash around. His face tightened at the sound of the boys whimpering behind him. "But unfortunately as we are under _these_ circumstances, this is the end of your life."

With one decisive swipe, the machete came across the snake's neck.

Sr. Morales turned back to the young boys, his chest heaving. "You must be careful here...the animals who dwell in here are not nice to those who make mistakes." He placed his machete back in his belt loop, not minding the sliver of blood on his pants. "And any danger brought to you would make Dr. Ramirez very unhappy...Gather up your sticks and let's head back to the camp." He didn't have to turn to hear them following his lead.

* * *

Arnold hadn't been able to let the ornament go since he had found it. While there was work being done to get camp ready for the night, Dr. Ramirez had given him one of his tools and let him go to work on getting rid of the dirt in between the grooves. Arnold was kind of fascinated with it; the grooves were more craftily done, more polished in execution than he had thought. He had allowed himself to continue undisturbed, staring at it even as the sun gave way for the moon, everyone else around him ate dinner and relaxed, and the men from the village sang songs and clapped out rhythms to pass the time.

"Trying to practice your x-ray vision?"

Arnold looked up to see Helga standing over him with a canteen in her hand. "Thanks," he grabbed the water and watched her kneel beside him. Her hair was loose again, falling over her shoulders and eyes without effort. Did she know that her hair did that?

"So," she settled beside him, "any kind of epiphany hit you yet?"

"I have a few ideas." Helga didn't tell him to stop, so he continued. "It's old...but I don't think it's something that was left there a long time ago. Dr. Ramirez said erosion happens during the rainy season, but it's not the rainy season. And it hasn't rained by random since we've been here." He put the ornament into her hand, "And feel the grooves from top to bottom."

Helga complied, her hand running over the eye. "Okay..."

"Now go from left and right and back again." He watched as her fingers followed his directions. When she looked up at him, he saw the glare of the campfire in her eyes.

"There's a scratch there." Her fingers ran over it with fascination. She tilted it towards the fire, and there it was, the unnatural mark that was the width of the ornament itself.

"Yeah, and that's all I got so far..." He watched Helga pull herself up from her spot beside him. "What?" He followed suite, brushing off whatever he thought was on the seat of his jeans. "What's up?"

Helga looked up at Arnold. "Phoebe."

"Phoebe?" The football-headed boy repeated in confusion.

"Yeah?" The petite girl in question walked up. The confused look on her face matched Arnold's. "Helga, are you actually calling me, or was I imagining it?"

"I called you, Pheebs. Can you do me a favor? I need you to cover-up for twenty at the most and then ask Dr. Ramirez to meet us where we had stopped."

Arnold didn't know how anybody could understand any of that, but Phoebe just gave her a shrug like it was the easiest thing in the world. "Cool. Yup." The bespectacled girl left and came back almost as fast, two flashlights in hand.

"Thanks." Helga looked over at Arnold. "Let's go."

* * *

"Okay. Here." Helga stopped walking and turned back to Arnold. She pointed to the ground between them.

He looked up at Helga with skepticism. "Yeah?"

"This where you found it right?" The ornament seemed to look right pass him, into the darkness of the jungle.

"Yeah. There's the dent." He watched as Helga spun around, as if she was looking for something. She paused in her turns, and walked over to a crooked tree framed by a small bush. "Does this branch and this bush look different to you. Like they were broken?"

"A little. So?"

She looked over at Arnold. "Roll with me on this one, Football Head. When we saw that Green-Eyes, he ran into the jungle. The same part of the jungle where we entered this morning. And now, five miles in, we're here, too.

"Dr. Ramirez found that ornament on the ground, but the eye part was in the dirt, not looking up at him on _purpose_ or anything. And you've looked at it and said that even though it's old, it's not old to this spot, right?"

Arnold nodded.

"Okay, so say we're Green-Eyes, and we're running pretty fast. Because this is quote, unquote, Green-Eyes territory, we know our way pretty well and we can run this far pretty easy 'cause we're used to it. But what if something happened? What if...we had been caught off-guard by someone we weren't expecting and because of that we're in a rush. Would we run the same way?" Her blue eyes looked at him expectantly.

Arnold let her words seep into his head for a moment before shaking his head slowly. "No, we'd be in a rush and we wouldn't run the same way—it'd be more erratic out of fear or to throw people off. We might make a bunch of mistakes."

She grinned. "And if we were running like crazy and made a mistake while wearing an _ornament_, maybe the mistake we made would make us go through something that could ripoff the ornament before going on our way." She glanced down at her palm before raising her blue eyes to Arnold's green ones.

Her hand touched the broken branch and came away with something. She shined her flashlight on what appeared to be a piece of green yarn.

"We're looking for which one of the trails that Green-Eyes guy picked." Helga concluded proudly.

Arnold looked over at her in confusion; she'd lost him. "'Which trail?' Helga, there's only _one _trail." He clicked his flashlight on, pointing it along the trees and tracing the path he had as it carried to the right. "We saw that path this morning."

"Arnold." She looked at him like he was crazy. "There are _four_ paths. They're really small, but there are three other paths in addition to that one." She directed her flashlight to the spaces between the gaps in the trees, flicking her light on and off. "One. Two. Three." The light flashed in emphasis.

And he saw them. They really were kinda small, but as the light had trained on the gaps, he noticed the lack of density beyond them. He clicked his own light on and stepped towards them, looking up and down for something—a worn path, a broken branch or two, _a tuft of something red_. Arnold crouched at the third gap, scraping the ground and picking up what he had seen.

They were feathers, tied together with a piece of place yarn.

_There were a lot of things about the person Arnold was trying to grasp...the gold and feather bracelets and anklets..._

"That's awesome." When he looked back to see Helga suddenly standing beside him. She jumped back a bit at his movement, sucking in a bit of breath and her teeth making an audible _clack _before clenching her jaw_. _

"Helga," her eyebrows rose a bit, "he went through here. You found it!"

"Uhh...yeah. _Court TV_."

"Arnold? Helga?" The two squinted at the onslaught of light shining on their faces.

Dr. Ramirez and Sr. Morales were walking coming towards them, their footsteps heavy on the ground. "One of your classmates—"

"—Phoebe—" Helga said, her voice a bit on edge. She straightened up and lifted her eyes towards the moon.

"Yes, sorry. Phoebe. She said you two had something to show. Mind letting us know what it is?"

Arnold stood up and opened his hand, letting the string of feathers be seen. "Sure."

* * *

_a/n: And here we are, Chapter 3!_

_I had had my qualms about this chapter because I really thought it was just going to be filler, with nothing really to it, but I'm happy. I like the flow of this; the beginning of the trip really had a lot of characters in it and I like the dialogue—very strong and dynamic. I felt like I was trying to create the end of a __CSI_ _episode towards the end. I don't know if it's solid, but I think it works. _

_I have to say thanks a lot to everyone who has come across the fanfic, read it, and encouraged me to keep going with it. It's been really fun so far. To all you people who put me on Story/Author Alert or Favorites, tell your friends, put me on a __HA!_ _forum post or something. And R&R! _

_s/n: Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca, according to Wikipedia, was a Carthaginian commander_ _from the first of ancient Rome's Punic Wars. It may seem weird that Curly knows that, but __Hey Arnold!__'s writers weaved in things like that all the time. Check out funnybones021's videos on YouTube for proof. _


	6. Chapter 4

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

**Translation:**

"_**¿Estas bien?" -**_** "Are you okay?" **

"_**¿Es usted serio?" - **_**"Are you serious?"**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

"You've only had three days without ice cream, Helga. We got here Saturday night. It's only Tuesday morning and the day hasn't even really started." Phoebe handed her best friend her toothpaste and began to brush her teeth, gazing at her reflection in the stream. She shook her head at the other girls doing the same around her. They had picked a really bad time to have an "ice cream" talk. But Helga had brought it up; it must've been important enough for her to break one of her own rules.

Helga did the same, minus her best friend's enthusiasm for the task. She shifted her weight on her knees to get comfortable and stuffed her hair under her shirt to keep the toothpaste off. "It sucks, Pheebs. I feel like I could be super close at any moment, but every time I have a chance at it, it slips through my fingers. I almost went crazy last night."

She spat the toothpaste foam out of her mouth and went to work on her tongue.

Phoebe was almost finished, dipping her fingers in the stream and wiping around her mouth. "Helga, we have two more days or something and then we're going to be back at the site. It's not like ice cream is a long ways away. And it won't be so hard to think about while we're out here." Phoebe put her toothbrush back in its container and grabbed at a piece of her hair, twisting it in a tight roll along her hairline before pulling out her hair tie.

"I know...but not having it _kills. _It's like the universe is against me." She slurped up the stream water she had cupped in her hand, swished, and spat. It landed with a dull, foamy splash bubbling across the red clay and still smelled very strongly of cinnamon. Her fingers dipped into the cold water and went across her mouth in one swipe.

"Just," Phoebe stood and watched her do the same, "just think about it as being just a little while longer until you're closer to actually getting ice—"

"Please, you guys! Seriously!" A classmate, a girl with braces sitting a few places over from them, moaned as if she was being tortured. "You two talking about ice cream so much is making me hungry." The girl stood up, her hand on her stomach. "Seriously, it's not that big of a deal. Get some when you get home if you have to! Jeez!"

Phoebe waited until the girl walked away to give her best friend a meaningful look.

Helga rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine. I'll try not to obsess over ice cream."

"You want me to forget this?" Phoebe teased.

"If you can find it in your heart." Helga pulled her hair out from under her shirt.

"Forgetting."

* * *

Whatever problems everyone had had about the walk through the jungle yesterday seemed to vanish with their night's sleep. Aside from a murmuring of conversations here and there and the sounds Nadine's camera made every time it took a picture of something, everyone was relatively quiet and focused on the task at hand.

Gerald and Phoebe had been talking to each other in low voices all morning. Rhonda, dressed again in Nadine's clothes, just stomped wordlessly, her eyes hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses. (She had ignored Stinky when he had asked her how she could actually see in them.) Eugene, despite complaints that morning about his stomach, was still pushing through with few injuries. Even Sid, Stinky, and Harold, who had been straggling in the back yesterday, seemed to be making extra effort to stay in the middle of the traveling party, their eyes constantly darting along the jungle floor.

Finding the new path meant that Arnold wasn't sure if they were still on the exact route they were supposed to be taking and he had to pay much more attention to the map than he had the day before. The terrain they were walking on was a bit rougher than expected and now that he knew of the jungle's erosion, that meant that the route may have changed slightly. Plus, knowing that they weren't entirely relying on his dad's path, but on the course taken by someone who had gone this same way to possibly throw them off really made him nervous. Almost like he was going against the plans he had had for a very long time. He tried not let the thought bother him too much.

But, the stream had grown wider and now stood as the makings of a river—just like on the map. That counted for something, right?

His foot connected to a loosened tree root, and in his stagger forward to get his balance, he slammed into something. Helga's body.

"Ow!" She turned back in annoyance.

The journal dropped out of his grasp and landed on the ground. "Sorry, Helga." He made a move to pick up the book and was almost close...only to feel his head hit something hard.

"_Cah-riminy!_" He looked up to see Helga grabbing a spot on her head. She traded the task of picking up the journal for rubbing her head. "It's like you're doing it on purpose or something." She shook her head.

"Geez, Helga. Sorry, I'm really sorry."

She pressed her finger against the spot and hissed in pain. Her eyes gave Arnold a dirty look before turning away. "And I already had a headache," she mumbled.

He stared at her. "You have a headache?"

"Yeah, it's because...it's really bright and stuff. Thanks for making it worse, Football Head." She shook her head and stepped ahead.

Helga wasn't thin-skinned, but she _had_ been quieter this morning and this was the first time he realized it hadn't been for the same reasons for her silence yesterday. He was surprised she hadn't been complaining about it all morning...it was kinda unlike her to not let anyone know that something was wrong or bothering her; everyone knew Helga wasn't one for subtlety.

He took a larger set of steps to catch up to her stride and place his hand on her shoulder. "Here," he handed her the journal and walked away. His eyes were titled skyward, searching around all of them them before finding what he was looking for.

Helga's eyebrow raised in question as he came back to her with the leaf of a palm tree in hand. "Let me have the canteens and you take this. To block out the sun." She complied, trading the extra bit of weight on her shoulder for the light green leaf above her head. "And we can go a little slower—y'know, baby steps." She nodded without speaking; her mouth had the potential to be a huge liability.

Despite all of Phoebe's advice that morning, she was still dwelling on it, opting out of talking for the privacy of her own heavy contemplation and nagging feelings. She couldn't help it—she had been close, even closer than when he had told her about his parents.

_He had been crouching, his back kinda away from her and holding the feather-bracelet thingy he had found. She had been a little quiet, but that was only done to watch him in the moonlight, not opting to say anything even as he practically sat on the ground and celebrated finding a clue. Part of her knew it was best for him to go through the emotions involved on his own. _

_But part of her couldn't help it; part of her knew that it was the almost perfect moment to say it. That's why she had walked over to him. _

_She was going to handle this differently than the last time: just one simple move to his ear to whisper, pull back, and wait. It wasn't like there was a need to be super loud; she preferred throwing off the part of the universe that seemed to like messing up moments like this for her. It wouldn't be what she was dreaming of, but they _were _alone and the moon _was _out—maybe it was as good as it was going to get._

_And he had turned towards her and looked at her with those eyes of his and started talking about that Green-Eyes._

_And __her brain—the same one that had thought it was a good idea to say it in the first place—changed its mind at the last second, because she hadn't even gotten "I" out._

_It hadn't even sounded like "I." _

_She. _

_Had. _

_Said._

_Something._

_Stupid._

_About._

_Court. TV.  
_

_ And then Dr. Ramirez and Sr. Morales came up and then __they _all _started on about the Green-Eyes and making plans. And she lost whatever brave momentum she had had going._

_There hadn't been a rock large enough for her to smash her head on when they had joined the others. And because of that, she had had the kind of disappointment that gnawed at her while she tried to do certain, essential things—like sleep._

If she had a headache for any reason at all, it was just that she had spent the night tossing and turning and was now spending the morning replaying everything in full detail, fully incapable of turning her brain off long enough to calm down. She liked to think higher powers had a strong sense of humor and truly believed that _someone_ _up there_ was shedding fat tears of laughter right now at her expense. Story of her life.

_But still_...

The tips of the palm leaf touched the top of her head with every step. The pain she had felt behind her head wasn't as strong. It was funny how everything he seemed to do was perfect.

Her head turned towards him just far enough to make it seem like she wasn't staring at him on purpose...

Those eyes of his were focused intently on the map, never straying to look at anything else. His tan was a bit darker than hers, the olive in his skin working more effectively in the jungle. It made his clothes today, the gray shirt and jeans, look much better.

"Hey, Helga," She almost panicked; had she been gaping at him? "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks."

"No problem." She was happy that he hadn't really looked over at her—there wasn't a lot she could do to explain the stupid grin on her face.

He really was perfect.

* * *

"Hey, Arnold? How's it going up there?" Dr. Ramirez shouted from the back, interrupting Mr. Simmons' one-sided conversation about Elizabethan poetry. Everyone had stopped for the moment and the talks that had been going on seemed to become one huge babble of voices full of gasps and "wows." He walked halfway through the crowd of pointing and awestruck teenagers to reach the front before abruptly stopping.

In front of them, past a series of rocks wedged into the bank they stood on, was the river they had been walking alongside all morning. The water still continuing downstream, albeit with a faster current than they had become accustomed to over the past few hours. But the part that was causing so much fascination was the large waterfall before them. The archeologist lifted his head in much of the manner of everyone around him; it was hard to form words about something high enough to effectively shade all of them at once—not that anyone could have heard him with the sounds of the water crashing down across from them.

He searched the backs of people's heads before finding the one he was looking for. "Arnold!" The older gentleman made his way through the rest of the group and walked up to the fourteen-year-old. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt before looking at him again. "I can understand why everything came to a stop now. Now that we're close to a body of water, we might see a lot of waterfalls, but not one that is as large as this one.."

"Dr. Ramirez, we're cut off by the river, but," Arnold handed over the map to explain better, "the trail on the map continues from the other side."

Dr. Ramirez tore his eyes away from the waterfall before looking at the map. "Here's the river," he mumbled, "this doesn't stop until reaching the coast and Atlantic. We could try to find calmer waters..."

"But if we kept going, we may lose time going up and coming back to this spot." Arnold's forehead wrinkled and he shifted the book to better have it cradled in his crook of his arm. "And if we go too far, we'd be outside of the boundaries of where we are."

The older male scratched the stubble thickening on his chin. Sr. Morales walked up to them, the question about their next move on his face. "If we go across that as we are, it is possible we may encounter danger; the children could be swept up in the current. Some of them are weak already and their bags may put them in greater risk." His brown eyes looked over at the sight of Eugene for emphasis.

"I understand," Dr. Ramirez began, "but we have rafts to handle the belongings. And there are your men to understand the river's depth, Hernando. They can swim just fine, right?"

Sr. Morales' brow pinched at the archeologist's suggestion. The look he gave was enough to make any other person nervous, but ultimately the expression smoothed itself over. "I will get one of the men to enter the water and swim across; the others can find the rafts." The man walked to the rest of men from the village, his Spanish so quick and thick, Arnold couldn't understand anything.

There was a moment of heavy knit brows, heated words and debate amongst them. But at last, one of them, the tallest, agreed to the task, slipping off his shoes, dropping his machete, and heading towards the bank. Everyone watched as he slowly made his way into the river, the water inching up to his waist, chest, shoulders, neck. A loud exclamation came from his mouth.

"He says," Sr. Morales translated the shout that fell out of his lips with a chuckle, "in so few words, it's very cold."

The man hopped up twice with his palms pressed together before diving in the water.

Everyone waited for him to resurface, the class' whispering rising in volume as they watched for him. Arnold's eyes stayed glue to the water.

"Isn't that a little dangerous?" Mr. Simmons asked after a minute or so. "What if he's caught up in the current?"

"It will be fine, I can assure you."

"Dr. Ramirez, I really don't think that this is safe for my stu—"

"_¿Estas bien?_" Sr. Morales suddenly yelled out, his hand cupped to his lips.

Mr. Simmons looked into the water to find himself staring at the man standing torso-height in the water and dripping wet.

Sr. Morales stretched his neck forward to catch whatever it was the man was yelling at them better. "Huh?" His eyebrows knit together and then detached. His face was nothing short of surprised. "_¿Es usted serio?_ …Mmm...He says, there is a rock formation in the river. Something like a bridge...but he says it's sturdy enough for us to cross." Sr. Morales looked over at the archeologist. "What are you thinking about, Angelo?"

"I'm thinking about that part of the creation myth that says the city is magicked to hide your shoulders. You remember. Maybe this is what it meant...it is possible that their height might make this 'shoulder height' to a Green-Eyes..."

"Dr. Ramirez, that is merely a coincidence." Mr. Simmons said, his voice somewhat harsh. "You cannot truly believe that this is what they meant.

"You're right: it is a very strong coincidence I'm reaching for. But stories like that always have a sliver of truth in them somewhere. I believe we have become very lucky in finding the truth at this moment.

"Okay," Dr. Ramirez clapped his hands, "now that we have found this, we should continue on. The rafts we have can be blown to hold our belongings. This may take awhile, so we should rest for the moment, maybe half an hour. That should be enough time." Dr. Ramirez didn't say anything after that, just crouched on his haunches and watched the river pass.

* * *

"If you're a guy, and you're coming over here to look at _any_ of us, you're _dead_! We already warned Curly!" Rhonda's voice snarled.

"Keep your claws in, Rhonda. It's me—Helga." She made her way to the thicket where all the shuffling was coming from. As expected, half of the girls in class were hiding there, dressing in their swimsuits. "So this is what happens when someone mentions swimming, huh?"

Rhonda was, of course, the first person to be done and was just trying to make the adjustments needed to her blue-and-orange monokini. She twisted her hair into one long curl before placing it over her shoulder. Even without a mirror, Rhonda seemed to be able to preen herself to perfection.

Helga rolled her eyes.

"Helga," Phoebe squinted. She pulled the knot made in the top half of her yellow tankini and hopped up and down a few times, testing to see if her chest stayed where it was supposed to. She took a better look at her friend as she put her glasses back on. "Helga, where's your swimsuit?"

The other girls turned to her and inquired more or less the same thing.

"I'm not wearing it. It's wedged somewhere in my bag and I'm not going to dig in there; I'll go through the river as I am and then air dry." She shook her head to avoid any arguments that any of the other girls could give her.

"But Helga—"

"Oh, don't worry, Phoebe," Rhonda cut in smoothly and smugly, "_I _have a swimsuit for Helga to wear." Rhonda went into her bag and immediately began to search.

Helga rolled her eyes. Typical Rhonda. "Really, Princess? I am _so _touched. Lemme guess, it's something my grandmother may—" Helga's sarcasm was immediately turned off when she actually caught a glance at what was pulled out. "Is. That. It?"

"Yup, this is the top half. And _here's_ the bottom. We're about the same size, so you shouldn't look bad in it. _I _always look good in this."

Helga looked in Rhonda's left hand and then her right hand and shook her head. She wasn't a prude, but there was no way those scraps could be considered a whole swimsuit. "Listen, I am _not_ wearing that. Pick, pick something else or let me just go get my swimsuit." Helga hoped that she had just imagined stammering like that.

"But, Helga, I really did picked this out of my closet just for you. All you ever wear are one-pieces—like my mother. You didn't wear it during my slumber party this last time, so I brought it."

"And I'm _so_ happy that you actually ventured out of the center of your universe to think of embarrassing _me_ just so you wouldn't be bored on this trip! How sweet. But forget it—get something else." Helga hoped the sarcasm was enough to get her to back off.

"Oh _c'mon_, Helga! What's the problem? It suits you. And it's not like you're not the Swamp Thing body-wise. We all know this." The expected rise in voices were all in support of Rhonda's statement. "Give me one reason why you wouldn't wear that—and the boys don't count."

Helga's her mouth stayed shut; her reasoning was gone, after all.

"If you wear this, I'll give you five bucks when we get back." Rhonda gave a Cheshire Cat's grin; the cherry was on top of the sundae now.

All the girls looked at Helga expectantly; Helga felt her stomach drop. Everyone knew that neither girl could never turn down a bet made by the other; they lived to prove the other wrong as often as they could. If she backed out of this without a half-way decent excuse, Rhonda would have something over her head...and wouldn't stop bragging about it.

And Rhonda already knew what to say. "Ten. Fifteen."

"Twenty." Helga spat. She couldn't really resist an upped ante. "No catcalling, no top snapping, and if you tell _any_ of the boys to look at me when I jump in or get out of that river, I'll take your arm, pop it out your socket, and beat you over the head with it." Helga's hand extended for their customary handshake.

"Deal." Rhonda placed the two-piece in her hand with a smile.

* * *

Arnold resurfaced, gasping for air and sputtering as the water crashed around his shoulders. Belatedly, he hoped nothing had fallen out that particular raft being passed and/or he wasn't going to have a knot on his head.

"Are you okay?" Helga asked him. Her teeth were chattering as water dripped down her face.

"Yeah, yeah...fine." A corner of his mind wandered if it was possible for him to blush when shoulder-height in cold river water.

The end of their break had come with the task of carrying their bags and equipment from one side of the river to the other. The men from the village had been successful in blowing up the rafts and were now resting. Phoebe had been the one to decide that it would be best to separate everyone into two groups, and because she wasn't known for coming up with bad ideas, everyone more or less agreed. The shortest in the class—she, Eugene, Curly, and a few others—would load things on the rafts and everyone else—Sid to Stinky and everyone in between—would stand along the underwater rock formation and pass the raft from hand to hand.

Of course, simply standing in a cold river wasn't the most fun thing to some people, so some of them had come up with the idea of crouching underwater and having the rafts pass overhead—to test who could hold their breath the longest. Arnold had thought that this was a pretty good idea at first. He had been one of the few able to stay under for a long time and it was kinda cool to feel the big orange raft pass above him.

The problem had risen this last time when he was struck with the idea of opening his eyes to actually look at the bridge. Because even though he had seen the rocks that made the bridge, through the millions of tiny bubbles and fish that hazed his vision, he had seen Helga.

Correction: He had seen Helga in her bathing suit.

It wasn't that he had never seen her in a bathing suit. And he hadn't turned towards the sound of her voice when he heard her threaten to break Nadine's camera for taking a picture of her (something about it being an "unspoken conditional guideline" in her and Rhonda's bet). But for some reason this one—half-striped black and white, half zigzagged red, white, and blue—had gotten to him. (_I've seen her in swimsuits—but not two-pieces. It's because it's a two-piece._)A part of him wasn't all that surprised that he had tried to stand up and slammed into the bottom of the raft.

Yup. Somehow in the last three days, he had decided he was on Sid's side in "The Helga Debate." He wasn't exactly sure when it—him thinking Helga was pretty—had happened, but he had a lot of times to choose from. There _was _their ride on the plane and, of course, right now... He partly hoped that those weren't the only reasons...because...according to Gerald, pretty girls affect his thinking ("It's like ya brain melts into ya shoes, man,").

But Arnold was kinda doubtful about _that_. It couldn't be _that_. Because whenever he thought a girl was pretty, it meant that he had a cr—

"—Okay everyone, that was the last raft! Good job! Start making your way over! If we work hard and spend enough time thinking of our next move, maybe we can put in another mile before we have to set up for camp!" Dr. Ramirez yelled. He straightened up and waved them over before turning his attention to Sr. Morales.

Arnold tried not to look over too much as Helga swam past him and lifted herself unto the river.

"While the men are over there jawing away, I'm going to get under this waterfall," Stinky ambled over.

Arnold tried really really hard not to look over much when Phoebe and the other girls half-dragged Helga towards the waterfall with them, squeezing themselves in close enough so that they were all under the water with the guys. And as much as he liked the idea of testing to see how long he could keep his eyes open while water hammered down on him, he didn't participate. Or open his eyes for that matter.

He was fourteen. There was a girl who wearing a bikini for a bet right now. He'd taken enough sex-ed classes to know what could personally happen to him next.

Maybe he couldn't handle bikinis as well as he thought he could.

"Hey, who is pushing?"

"Ow!"

"I bet everybody here that I can drink the most water!"

"I almost slipped, guys!"

"Sorry, sorry."

"I'm blind! The water's blinding me!"

"Stop! Why are you doing that when we don't have enough room?"

He, too was close to yelling something out, when he felt someone press into his side from his left. With an effort to right his footing, he suddenly felt himself dislodged from the rest of the group and into where the bank they were standing ended. That was enough of being under the waterfall, he guessed. He still had to get the journal out and help Dr. Ramirez and Sr. Morales figure out where they were going.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the water still slithering down his face and body, he held out his arm to find a solid place against the wall and felt fingertips brush against a bit of the rock formation. _Got it. _With careful steps, he continued nearing the wall, only to find that he wasn't getting any closer no matter how many steps he took. He opened his eyes and found that his face was about a foot away from the rock wall... and his right foot was halfway inside something...something...?

He crouched down to find himself staring into what looked like hole in the rock formation. It was about waist-height and pretty big, big enough to fit him. Reaching his hand inside, he felt a sort of coolness and something drip on him—water. That piqued his curiosity, that led to him going down on all fours and fitting himself in. He was surprised he was getting this far; he didn't know anything about caves; he thought he was supposed to come to a dead end by now.

But he realized his whole body was in the cave...and there was no dead end, just...more cave.

Arnold didn't bother to look behind him or call anybody inside with him. He just kept going through the darkness, feeling the springy, wet ground underneath his palms and knees, the water dripping unto his head and back, the path veer to the left.

Or maybe it was the right.

Or maybe he hadn't curved or anything.

...How long had he been crawling?

Some part of himself kept reminding itself that his eyes _were _open, but the dark was so complete and solid, he wasn't sure. It was best for him to go back, but the moment the thought passed his mind, he squinted at the light that suddenly pored into the—

–wait.

Light?

* * *

"I thought he was beside you!" Gerald yelled.

"_I _thought so too, but obviously, he's not here now! And _don't_ yell at me—no one was really watching anybody!" Helga fired back.

"Well, we couldn't have lost him in the river. He's able to swim pretty well, and I'm sure he could cling to the bank well enough." Mr. Simmons was musing aloud, fear underlying his stream of thoughts.

Arnold peeked his head from the archway to find that his class, Mr. Simmons, Dr. Ramirez, and Sr. Morales were milling about talking amongst one another. Half of his peers were still in their bathing suits and trunks, water dripping down and their teeth chattering like crazy.

Suddenly, he heard a big gasp rip through the quiet murmuring. "Arnold!" Sheena jumped about a foot in the air, hand over her chest and taking in very deep breaths. "_Why _are you down there? And where's the rest of your body?"

Dr. Ramirez, Sr. Morales, and Mr. Simmons all broke through the crowd and came to the foot of the rock wall. None spoke as Arnold pulled himself from off the ground, but only one of the three looked truly upset.

"Arnold! What—you all are to stay with your partners for a reason! When we called you all in to regroup, and we saw that everyone was with their partner but Helga, you sent myself, Sr. Morales, and Dr. Ramirez into a full-panic mode! This is very irresponsible. I _know _that you are excited but, but, this kind of behavior is very unlike you!"

"Sorry Mr. Simmons, but," the fourteen-year-old turned his attention to the less angry adults, "I found something.

"Something?" Sr. Morales said.

"Yeah—like, like, a crack in this wall." "I just went through it. There's a long tunnel that goes through the entire wall and and out the other side and there's the jungle." The excitement he felt about his discovery had manifested itself. "It's, it's, it's—"

"Whoa, whoa, Arnold, please calm down." Dr. Ramirez placed his hands on Arnold's shoulders to calm him. "Now what are you trying to say? That this tunnel you found—"

"I think it's where we're supposed to go to next. It makes sense, doesn't it?"

It took Mr. Simmons a moment to collect himself. "Arnold, now I know that this is very special for you, but we can_not _base our plans on a conveniently-placed occurrence. It's just too farfetched. This isn't a movie."

"But—"

"—But we cannot call ourselves trying to find this city without thinking outside of the box. Mr. Simmons, the Green-Eyed People are one of the most intuitive indigenous peoples of the world. That is a fact. Their desire to remain a secret from most of the world would lead them to find clever ways of doing so. This wall may carry on for a long distance and by the time we find ourselves getting lost, we may find ourselves unable to find the right path. _That _would be a 'conveniently-placed occurrence.' But something hidden behind a natural occurrence..."

He trailed off for a moment before slowly nodding his head. "Okay."

"Okay?" A few voices repeated with confusion.

"Okay. This is our next move, this is how we'll go next. Everyone, take a few minutes to find your bags in the pile and then meet here. Arnold, go and find a flashlight this time." Dr. Ramirez watched as everyone around him headed off to the pile of bags and equipment. He didn't move for awhile, just stood and watched the water fall into the turquoise-blue river below...

* * *

_a/n: whoo! Chapter 4! Yeah! (victory dance) This one was a little hard to get my thoughts all the way together, but I do like it. Once again, very dynamic although I wasn't planning on this much tension... _

_Because it's the holidays and an all-around joyous time, I decided to give you two hits of the ArnoldxHelga pairing. Hormones can be a terrible thing at age fourteen—poor Arnold, (LoL). I also wanted to give you an "ice cream talk" between Phoebe and Helga...I really loved them when I watched __HA!_

_Once again, any Spanish is from Babelfish—please free to let me know the correct phrasings. Hope you enjoy. R&R_

_s/n: The swimsuit I describe for Helga actually exists. It's part of Tavik Swimwear's "Red, White, & Crue" collection for Summer 2010. I think it's cute and have wanted to place it in the story since this story started going through my head... Google it if you're curious enough. _


	7. Chapter 5

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

**Chapter 5**

"Arnold, we need to talk." The fourteen-year-old looked up to see his teacher standing over him and wringing his hands. The campfire was casting shadows over his face.

Arnold tore his eyes away from the night sky, the moon framed by the low-hanging branches that were above his head. "Sure." Arnold moved his journal and a dirty plate of what was a ration of a large can of beans from his spot around him. He waited as his teacher settled unto the ground beside him. He had almost forgotten the pockets of his classmates and the men from the village milling around the campfire; Dr. Ramirez and Sr. Morales had volunteered themselves to go and find some more branches for the flame.

Two words had been stuck in his head all day: "_We're close."_

He had been right. The tunnel he had found had led to another part of the jungle, one that was open to a steep decline that evened out and fell into a valley densely filled with trees that stretched for miles. The river they had been walking on snaked through the foliage, a glassy blue strip from far away. Everyone was heeding Sr. Morales' warning, walking with a bit more caution than usual, constantly opening and closing their canteens under the humid canopy of trees.

Nobody rolled their eyes when Rhonda began to complain—almost all of them were thinking the along the same lines as her:_"Why were we excited about finding that stupid hole if it just led to more trees? Shouldn't the city be right _here_?"_—

That was, until a butterfly with baby blue wings flitted by them. And they found that in the particular patch of trees they were standing under, there were nothing but white, blue, and yellow butterflies, all wafting around in the sky above them and landing on their bags, heads, and shoulders.

Nadine called them "Morphus Vigils." Sr. Morales nodded in confirmation.

"_I've only seen the white and yellow ones in my books. But they have blue ones at the zoo—that's them." She lifted her camera to snap a photo of one resting on the back of one of the men._

"_You're sure?" Dr. Ramirez asked her._

"_Yeah." She only nodded her head a little bit, but the butterflies that rested in her curls floated up anyway, joining the rest in the air._

_Dr. Ramirez rested his chin in palms. "'Magicked to fly on wings.'" His eyes lifted to the sky before landing back on Arnold's. "I think, young explorer, that...we're close." _

Dr. Ramirez's idea was that the wings he had heard of in the Green-Eyes Creation Myth meant "butterfly wings" and following the butterflies' flight pattern would lead them closer to the city itself. He had mentioned something about studies finding that the Green-Eyed People considered the butterfly to be sacred "much like how people in modern-day Mexico hold the Monarch Butterfly in such high regard" and was convinced that it was the right path to go to.

Arnold had heard him, but didn't really care...

Those two words, _"We're close,"_ those words had taken seed in Arnold's head. He had stopped being interested in the butterflies and let his mind run wild, so unerringly, truly, and uninhibitedly wild, he had barely registered anything that had happened since then.

But that had ended suddenly with Mr. Simmons' disgruntled sighing.

"Oh, I'm afraid there is no way to say this except straightforwardly." The teacher murmured before turning to his student. "Arnold, this excursion, while it has been very...eye-opening...has gone on too long. I'm afraid of the risk we continue to put ourselves in and I feel like if we were to continue, we would only find ourselves walking around in circles.

"I have asked Dr. Ramirez to turn the group back tomorrow morning and he has agreed with my decision."

Arnold felt as if the world had tilted. Maybe that was what happened when daydreams ended abruptly, crashed to the ground, and broke into tiny, tiny pieces.

"What?" He felt like he was drowning in water as he picked himself up off of the ground, staring down at his teacher.

A few students, Gerald and Helga among them, broke off their conversations and looked up. Arnold _never_ yelled...at least, not at a teacher like that.

Mr. Simmons stood at a loss for words for a moment before starting over again. "I know this trip has been particularly important to you, which is why I wanted you to know before I announced it to the class. I'm sorry, Arnold, but as your teacher and guardian during this trip, I have to be mindful of the time limits and the safety of you and the class. We simply can't—"

"But we still have a few more days! Couldn't...couldn't you, me, and Dr. Ramirez all sit and talk about this?"

A few of the students had caught on to what was going on and were murmuring now, some in annoyance about "whatever the heck they were screaming about" and some were celebrating, mentioning in semi-loud voices about how happy they were that the hike was _finally_ over. Their exultation made the rest previously not paying attention to the dialogue between the two nudge each other and point.

"No!" Mr. Simmons' usually genteel face hardened a bit at the suggestion. "No. Arnold, I do not think that is a good idea. You and Dr. Ramirez are very like-minded and his...presence...has affected some of the otherwise clear-headed decisions you usually make into some very quick and unsafe judgments these last few days. Today's fiasco with the tunnel is proof of that.

"Your classmates," his hand gestured to the spectators, "cannot handle the same conditions you seem to be so prepared for. I have to think about their needs, too."

The young boy felt like his head had fallen off his shoulders. Everything seemed to tip sideways and the dreams that seemed to be go grand and perfect in his mind just a moment before were blowing up in his face.

"_We're close...We're close..." _

He was _so_ close...

Some piece of him welled with that knowledge and his disappointment...he didn't try to fight the complete fury and dejection that was associated with those feelings.

"But, Mr. Simmons...that's not fair." The declaration felt good, spurred his anger. "That's not _fair_!" Arnold shouted.

The educator looked taken aback as if he had been slapped in the face and the nosiest students catcalled at his words. "Arnold, this behavior isn't like you. These outbursts of yours are very troubling...why, why is this trip so important to you?"

That question shut him up quick. He angrily glanced down at his journal, the faded letters glowing white-gold in the moonlight.

"If you could maybe explain to me why this is so imperative, maybe I could understand." Mr. Simmons pressed.

"Yeah, Arnold," Rhonda stood up now, no longer able to stay silent at the exchange between the two, "what's 'not fair?' You sold us on this contest-thing, you wanted to come out on this trip and we've all been running around for three days following one stupid clue after another. We're all tired. _I_ haven't felt clean in _days_. What could possibly be 'not _fair_?'"

"Rhonda _does _make an astute point." Stinky mused aloud.

"Yeah. That's the smartest thing Rhonda's said on this whole trip." Sid.

"Hey, yeah!" Harold. "What's 'not fair?'"

Arnold looked over at the few faces among the spectators asking the same question in a hundred ways and back at the journal. He felt color rushing to his face. He could feel a lump of what he wanted to say lodged in his voice...or maybe those were the tears he was holding back. It didn't help that the anger was still there, coating his clenched hands and tense body.

"He doesn't have to say anything. Arnold's always does stuff that we wa—" Gerald.

"My parents. My parents are in this jungle. I came here to find them."

His words caused a pause in the conversations circling the fire. Everyone stood with baited breath. It was a pretty standard reaction when it came to Arnold's family. Arnold's parents were, like, taboo. No one ever talked about them out loud. No one ever questioned him about it because they never knew how he'd react to it.

Mr. Simmons looked caught between shock and pity. He said through the lump in his throat and his clenched teeth.

"The last time anybody saw them was _here_. So I came here to search for them."

Not even the branches from the fire crackled in the air. A few students looked over at each other, each thinking the person they were locking eyes with would be the one to break or build upon the thick tension hanging over them.

And suddenly everything Arnold felt—the anger, the sadness, the hope breaking apart piece by piece—just bubbled and flowed through his entire body, from his soles of his feet to the very top of his head. He felt a prickle in the corners of his eyes.

Arnold was grabbing at his journal before the action registered itself in his mind. Silently, he gripped the leather-bound book and carried himself away from the site, letting the moon guide his path.

* * *

Helga was hoping that he was just standing like that because he was coming back to the fire and everyone else. But she wasn't stupid, she'd thrown away a ton of things in her life, intentional or otherwise; there was no denying the stance he had, the shoulder-width of space between his feet and the way his arm—the one with the journal in hand—was cocked back like that. She made a ton of noise as she neared to do stop him from doing something stupid.

He looked back at her and let that same arm drop, now that he had been found. The moon hung brightly from where they were standing, the small plateau that continued into the steep decline. The sight was too beautiful, overlooking the entire jungle below them and the Milky Way above them, larger than life...

"Did Mr. Simmons tell you come here and get me?" He asked, his voice sounding choked.

She shook her head and made a few steps towards him, just enough to be closer without being beside him. It hurt, but he deserved his privacy, since... "Everybody's just...standing around." Helga wouldn't let the silence last between the two of them. "Arnold, I'm really sorry."

Her words confirmed the end for him. His shoulders shook a bit. "I was so close. I'm still _so close_. The map ends here. They could be here, but...I'll never know. This is it; if I couldn't find them now, there's no way I can find them later. This was probably my only shot...and I don't even get to know if they're..._alive_...or not.

"Why did I promise anything?" He looked down at his journal again and remembered the talks he had had with Grandpa...about the possibilities of not finding them too quickly, about them being gone for a long time.

_A long time? _In this very moment, _Forever_ was a better term.

Her brow furrowed at his words. In all the years she had known him—her whole life almost—this was the only time he had sounded fully and completely without hope to her ears. This was new, at least when it came to Arnold. Helga looked up at him in the moonlight and walked closer to him, her mouth in a slight, confused frown. "Why is this the last time? Or the only time? You can find them again. This doesn't have to be the last time."

Her hand rested on his shoulder. "You can come here again." She pretended that his brushing her shoulder off him didn't cause her a dull pain through her entire body.

"How?"

"You can, you can do something, raise money. Get tickets, go to a travel agency, find a guide, use your map." She bit her lip, thoughts of words that could make him feel better falling short on her tongue.

He looked down at the book once again. "How am I supposed to do all of that?"

Helga looked around, as if the answer was floating around in the air waiting for her to pluck it up. "I'll help you. We can have a fundraiser to raise money, I'll empty my bank account, I'll loan the money from Big Bob..."

His listless heightened a bit of hysteria she was feeling at the sight of him. "Arnold, you're always doing stuff for everybody! _Everybody!_ No one deserves what they want more than you. They all know this; they were just talking about it after you left! You should be able to do and have the things you want. Now that everyone knows why this was so important to you, we can all help get you here!

"If you want to come to San Lorenzo, I'll do _anything _and everything I can—I _promise_!" The decibels in her voice were rising; it was the only way she could speak past the boulder in her throat.

He gaped at her before his eyebrows scrunched up like she was full of crap; he had enough of promises for this lifetime. "How can you promise something like that? And why would you even do that for me, Helga?"

Her eyes widened and the blood in her body rushed to her face. Her face had to be cherry-red. She _felt_ it.

The moon out like this, them together alone like this, her having his entire attention like this. This was the moment she had been searching for. It was the worst example of what she had been searching for, but this was it. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath. She wished all the blood rushing to her face would make her do something useful, like, pass out.

"Because..." her heartbeat felt like a stampede in her chest, "I love you, Arnold. And wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do, I'll go and do it with you...because I really love you."

The moment she looked over at his face, she realized that saying it was the worst idea she had ever had in her entire life.

His eyes bugged out a little bit and he took a few steps away from her as if a swarm of bugs had come out of her mouth.

Her being such a big help this entire week...The feelings he had been experiencing all week when it came to thoughts of Helga, when saw her in her bathing suit that afternoon—he finally realized where it came from. He hadn't thought about the top of the FTi building in years. But this was just like that time: them standing here, her telling him that she loved him, him telling her that he needed to think because things were moving too fast.

His head shook minutely."I don't believe it."

His words made the red from her face disappear. The dull pain she had felt increased and centered in one place: her chest.

She had had dreams about how this part was supposed to happen, but minus the moon in the sky, none of the things she expected were happening right now. Those four words and the pain she felt were proof of that.

"I'm not lying, I'm being honest. I'm know I said it before when we were little...and we said or _you _said and _I_ just _agreed_...but I wasn't 'in the heat of the moment' then and I'm not now. I'm serious about _everything_ I'm saying. I'll raise money for plane tickets, I'll buy a plane, I'll _fly_ a plane! I'll do anything! Because it's important to you and I will do anything that's important to you. Because I love you!" Her voice carried out into the jungle below.

The silence between them was uncomfortable, like a wet, heavy blanket on a hot summer's day. During a heat wave. In mid-July.

"Helga," Arnold paused, his head shaking, "I can't do this." He tried to move around her.

It was déjà vu all over again. She knew what was going to happen just from looking at him. Still, her body moved and her hands pressed on his shoulders to stop him from walking away.

He could really feel the heat from her palms on him and his face turned completely red.

Her chest was still hurting; maybe it was beginning to break. She looked down at her chest, as if the cavity had opened on its own and she was going to see it crumble away for herself.

Arnold watched her as she tried to compose herself. Part of him wanted to comfort her, to make her feel better, but he realized that there really wasn't anything that he could say. He stomach wriggled some more.

She swallowed the lump that was lodged in her throat. "Why can't you?" The girly longing was thick in that question. "We don't have to talk about everything _now_; I can wait. Can we talk about it when we're at home? Or can you at least tell me 'yes' or 'no' now?" She licked her lips and looked over his shoulder at the moon for a brief second before looking straight back at him. "Tell me 'yes' or 'no'."

He felt his palms break out into a sweat like he was about to take a test he hadn't really studied for. Part of him wanted to meet her halfway and give her what she wanted...to give her the "yes" or "no" she wanted—at least a "maybe."

But a much larger part of him, the side hadn't begun to even to move past the idea that the one thing he wanted above all other things—_all_ other things—stopped him. He was still trying to accept the fact that that thing he wanted wasn't going to come true. He couldn't face that and this right now. He had to do it one at a time, he had to pick one thing over the other...

He because to shake his head slowly. "I can't. I can't get past what happened just a few seconds ago... And do this, too."

He felt her hands detach themselves from him. It was as if they both knew that her heart had broken at that moment.

Of course, Arnold could only imagine it; Helga felt it and it was like something inside her had snapped away really, _really_ bad.

And in the complete sadness she felt, she felt herself go to her only defense at times like these. Her jaw clenched, her fist tightened, she glared at him. And through a world that suddenly blurred with her tears, she only saw red.

"Then...move it..._Football Head_. Get you and your stupid Football Face away from me!" She growled and lifted her furious glance at him through the fringes of her bangs.

It was enough to knock the "I'm sorry" out of his mouth. Arnold didn't say anything, but like from a time long, long ago, he sidestepped and gave her plenty of room.

He knew better than to turn back the moment he thought he heard her sobbing.

* * *

_I don't understand..._

_Why? Why doesn't he even...like...me back?_

_Is the thought of being with me that terrible...that he can't even say anything to me?_

_Why doesn't anyone tell you that this is the worst feeling in the entire world?_

_What am I supposed to do now?_

_Maybe we weren't meant to be like I thought..._

_I'll have to rip out those poems when I get home... I'm going to have to burn them..._

_I'm going to have to black out his face from my yearbook..._

_This is it. This is the end._

_I need to let go..._

_I have to let go..._

_I have to..._

She opened her eyes like she was a newborn, opening herself to the landscape of the plateau once more. Her entire face was leaking, emotions were still twisting up inside, but she felt completely dead at the same time; the idea of maggots popped up in her head...that was more than appropriate for how she felt. She didn't know how long she had been crying on the log she had found; she felt like someone had squeezed lemon juice her eyes, they felt that raw.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to be back in her bed and not leave it for the rest of her life.

She fought the urge to start crying again; she had the worst headache and she was going to have to go back to everyone..._him_...eventually.

She suddenly realized the she wasn't alone.

At one point, she had thought her sobbing sounded a little...raspy. But now there was an explanation: Brainy was here and standing near her, wheezing as always. She must've felt worse than she had thought; her reflexes were usually better than that. The fact that she couldn't tell how long he had been standing there—hell, the fact that she couldn't remember even seeing him once on this whole, entire trip—really discomforted her.

A little voice in the back of her head chuckled. Apparently, part of her thought it was funny that in spite of the years, he was still somehow fully capable of finding her when she wanted to be alone.

The young teen was standing over her and blocking most of the moonlight, gangly and in his usual beige-colored clothes. Maybe she should've been angry, but the way his eyes kept shifting back and forth stopped her. He looked absolutely scared crapless.

She watched as his hand reached out towards her and brushed against her cheek. His fingertips were wet in the light. "Uh...you're crying..."

Maybe "crying" was today's "Secret Word" in _Helga's Playhouse_ because before she could stop herself, she was already standing up, almost towering over him in her fury. "Yeah, I've been crying! I'm having a really crappy time! Why are you here? Why you can't just leave me alone!" Helga had wanted to add something really cruel at the end, like "four eyes" or something, but she really didn't have the heart; it wasn't his fault her heart was a lump of stone in her chest.

Brainy did look affronted at Helga's passionate display, but swallowed and firmed his expression. "I, uh, want to tell you...that...uh, that...

"...I love you."

Maybe her heart was now conditioned to pang painfully at the word "love" or something.

She'd never know because before she knew it, she felt something pressing on her mouth: _his_ mouth.

It was all a blur, a really surreal blur. Somehow, in her weakness, he had ended up bowling her over. His lips weren't cracked and his breath didn't really stink...it actually smelled sweet, like peppermints. (Did he get one of those spray things people used before they kissed on television?) But in the confusion, she didn't fight it; she _was_ that pathetic.

But reality suddenly came crashing on her and she pressed her hands to his chest to break free.

He let her go and looked up as if expecting something wonderful to happen. "I love you," he repeated.

Yeah, that proved that her heart _pang_ed terribly at the word "love."

She just stared at him. It wasn't as if she hadn't known Brainy was in love with her; he'd proposed to her when they were nine. No matter how many times she had been mean to him, he had always come back; he was always there (usually in places she wasn't expecting). He probably knew everything about her—_everything_ about her. And, in a really strange, creeper-type way, he really _was_ devoted to her... And maybe, in an alternative universe or something, he would be..._good?_...for her.

But she couldn't help it.

Her hand lifted to her lips and rubbed her mouth in one slow, almost deliberate wipe. She kept her eyes on the ground to avoid looking him in the eye. She knew what it was like to have a broken heart, when someone you loved like crazy wouldn't return the feelings...

But she couldn't lie. She hadn't felt anything from the kiss. She didn't even know if it was good or bad...it just wasn't up to the standard she expected and even once really longed for...

...it wasn't a kiss from...

from...

She was a terrible person and her eyes welled up with this fact.

"Brainy, I'm sorry." Her head shook as tears fell. She felt like a child who was being punished. "I _know_ that you love me...and stuff...But I can't...because I...but I shouldn't..."

"Don't give up."

She looked up at him as if he had grown two heads.

"You love Arnold. So, uh don't give up. Be," he wheezed, "happy."

And just as silently as he always appeared before her, he turned around and headed back to everybody else.

Helga stared after his retreating figure as if she couldn't believe that that had just happened (and she didn't). But the dead feeling that had been weighing down inside her was gone.

She turned back to the jungle where everyone still was around and wiped her eyes. She had to talk to him again, she had to tell him...she had to...do something...

She grinned and exhaled, ready to try again while still brave enough to do so.

And felt the ground give way under her feet.

* * *

Her jaw connected with something pretty solid as she felt herself continue to slide down.

Oh yeah. That was _the_ _ground_.

How long was this going to last? Falling, she meant. And why was she so calm about it? She was some kind of a dummy; she was supposed to be screaming so someone would know she was in danger.

The decline seemed endless. Her fingers couldn't find anything to grip on; there was already dew on the ground and her grasp kept slipping, plus the side was really steep. She finally gave up, opting to place her forearms over her face and rolling along with everything. That was, until, the land had leveled off again and she found herself nearing a thicket of trees.

It didn't hurt when her legs scratched along the ground over the fallen twigs and rocks and stuff. But when she tried to end her tumble by rolling towards the nearest tree—that _killed_.

"Criminy," Helga half-murmured, half-whimpered. She always made jokes about waking up and feeling like she'd been hit by a truck. That joke was no longer funny starting from this very moment; from now, pain from slamming into trees felt the same as hitting a truck.

She kept herself completely still, not opting to move quickly until she was sure she wasn't a broken doll or something. Her fingers and toes wiggled and her chest rose and fell like normal; aside from her back and a few stings from various parts of her body—scratches, no doubt—everything seemed fine.

Slowly, she brought herself up, using the tree trunk for support. Her back, from one side to the other, felt terrible; she was going to have the worst bruise ever. Her footsteps weren't steady; only two-year-olds walked the way she was right now. Maybe her ankle wasn't right.

Her blue eyes glared at the moon with hatred and back to where she had fallen. If she looked up into the dark sky and squinted, she could kinda see the curl of smoke coming from the campfire in the jungle. All she had to do was turn back, find a place to climb up and yell for someone to come get her. Maybe Brainy had seen her fall.

(It was a very special time in life when she was depending on _Brainy_ for help.)

A snap of a twig distracted her for a second and her head whipped over her shoulder. In the moonlight, not too far from where she herself was standing, on this new unfamiliar plateau, she saw...a person...with a funny-shaped head. A funny, football-shaped head.

"Arnold?" She said half-happily and half-confusedly.

The figure turned.

Tattoos, one of those things people wore on their heads, piercings... And completely unfamiliar green eyes.

And yet...they weren't completely unfamiliar because she had seen another pair of green eyes like them, liquid emerald in the pale light a few nights ago.

It wasn't Arnold.

The figure opened his mouth and out came a tumble of...she really didn't understand Spanish (if that even _was _Spanish). Without hesitation, he walked over, closer and closer the words pouring out and his hands rubbing on his arms. He paused as she jumped back, his hands rising up and his gait slowing and he neared her.

The reflexes she had felt had gone haywire when she had been rolling down a decline suddenly came back.

She screamed pretty loudly, even for her. And then felt her body fall to the floor.

* * *

_**According to Craig Bartlett, Brainy was supposed to have his most greatest moment ever in **__**The Jungle Movie**__**. At one point, Helga completely gives up on her love for Arnold and Brainy "brings her back to life."**_

* * *

_a/n: So Chapter 5. I felt like I should've given you a warning in the beginning: lots of angst. I do not know exactly why this chapter is the chapter for all the anger, but what can I say? It was all very emotionally-charged and "in the moment"—and I of course, liked writing it. I do not know why Arnold would admit to the reason behind the trip, but I thought it was a good thing to add there._

_I think my biggest folly in writing so far was that I really didn't touch on Hey Arnold!: The Movie like I should have. Here I make mention of one of the most defining moments of ArnoldxHelga but I feel like I could've gone into depth more. I didn't want it to be based on that so much, but when I got to Helga's confession, I found myself writing a repeat of history. I think it would've happened this way...I hope that Arnold isn't considered a jerk, but at this point, I wanted him to say "no" and I wanted his actions to be such a way that it would be "Arnold" (considering his outburst in the first section is so OOC)._

_Where was Brainy throughout the entirety of the chapters before this one? It doesn't matter. Brainy shows up to places mysteriously; there is no need for an explanation since the HA! Crew never provided one. R&R_

_s/n: The mention of "Secret Words" and "Helga's Playhouse" is a little fun. Arnold actually first came to life as a Claymation short on the show PeeWee's Playhouse. _


	8. Chapter 6

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

**Chapter 6**

"_Dr. Ramirez, Sr. Morales, please. I've known Helga for a long time. While it is somewhat normal for her to wander off on her own, the fact that we're realizing that she's been gone for so long is cause for concern. We have to be open to the idea that she has gone missing because she went off...to find the city on her own." _

_Mr. Simmons looked straight at Arnold. _

_And slowly, everyone else did too._

* * *

He came upon the sight with hesitation. He had absolutely no idea how exactly to start, but it was probably best to start with humor.

Yeah, definitely humor.

"Maybe you should stop lay off of kicking that; I don't think the plant knows anything."

Arnold didn't jump when he suddenly felt Gerald's hand on his back, simply because he was surprised that somebody had actually gone out this far to find him; he'd chosen to wander away for a reason. "Hey."

"Hey. You gotta come back to camp. They're calling us in...I think it's just to figure out what to do next or something. You'd have to be crazy to think she's here." Gerald sneaked a look at Arnold's face to make sure his best friend knew where his loyalties were.

Arnold nodded his head silently, but didn't make a move to follow. "They think we planned this, don't they?"

From the look on his face, Gerald knew it wouldn't be good to downplay anything; there was a reason why nobody else in the group was exactly standing beside Arnold right now. "Nobody's blaming _you_ exactly; they know you wouldn't do something like this. It's just really crazy and nobody's slept so...y'know."

Arnold didn't respond; nothing that Gerald had said was a "yes" or a "no."

He'd seen their faces and knew that half of them, like Mr. Simmons and Sr. Morales, thought that she had run off to find the Green-Eyes' hidden city. The rest of them probably thought that she was hiding somewhere and was going to come out when the time was right. On his signal no less. "I looked in the journal when we started; the map's still there. And she's...somewhere."

He kicked the bush's branches a few more times just to have something else to think on.

Gerald placed his hand on Arnold's shoulder to subdue him. "I feel like you and me are in an episode of _The Z-files_ or something. Like we're gonna be stuck in the jungle for—" The fourteen-year-old ended that sentence in its track. _Bad timing, bad timing._ "Listen, Arnold...I'm sorry we didn't find your parents."

Arnold didn't say anything. For the first time in maybe his entire life he hadn't been thinking about his parents, but now that they had been brought up, he wondered if losing people to the jungle of San Lorenzo was something that would always inevitably happen to him. It was one thing for his parents to be missing, but somehow, it was a completely different thing now that Helga was gone, too.

With his parents, he only had memories, bedtime stories, the journal...and those things were important to him. But he had more with Helga: he had had conversations with her; he'd had moments with her when she made him laugh or made him angry and stuff; he'd _touched _her, like, actually hugged her and stuff. Plus, Helga had her own family, her own life, things and...people she...liked. She was "realer" in a way.

His stomach twisted and his heart lurched a bit. It had been doing that for hours now.

Arnold's silence made Gerald hesitate on the next thing he was going to say. "Phoebe told me that she saw Helga follow after you when you walked off last night. Don't worry, she only told me. _I_ didn't notice, but she said that when you had come back, you looked real...upset about somethi—why's your face red like that?" The tall boy sneaked a look out his eye at Arnold and his eyebrow rose at the look of his friend's face. "Did something happen between you two?"

Arnold looked at Gerald before cringing; he couldn't lie about anything now that he had slipped up and part of him really wanted to tell somebody. He looked over his shoulder towards camp headquarters before dropping his voice. "Helga told me last night that she...loves me."

"LOVES YOU? SHE TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT THAT SHE _LOVES_ YOU?" He took a few steps back and grabbed at a tree branch close by to steady himself. He was absolutely speechless. Part of him really, really wanted to laugh, but the look on his best friend's face let him know how bad of an idea that would be.

He walked back slowly and took a deep breath. "What'd you say back?"

"I didn't say anything. I _couldn't_."

Gerald shook his head. "I don't blame ya—that's crazy! It's like one of those romantic movies or something. ...Helga G. Pataki _loves_ you? After all those times at one-eighteen when she used to pick on you and throw your books and call you names?"

Arnold nodded, remembering. "But that was a long time ago. It's not like she does all that stuff now. Y'know, she's pretty nice now."

"Yeah, for _Helga_. I mean, urgh" he clenched his brown eyes closed; he wasn't too articulate without sleep, "I know that was a long time ago. And you guys have been cool this week, talking and stuff. I thought you might've killed each other."

"Yeah, she's not that bad as a partner or anything..." Arnold's lips tugged into a small smile.

Whatever Gerald was gearing up to say trailed off as if he realized something that made his eyebrows crease: Arnold's face at full volume. "Arnold, do you like Helga, too?"

Arnold's stomach and heart gave off that funny feeling, but the only thing that came up in his head was, "I don't know."

Gerald's brow furrowed. That was new and different. Arnold, for all the moments he found himself _like_ liking a girl, had always known when he _like_ liked them. Gerald never really agreed with his reasons—Just how many girls walked the earth with "amazing hair" anyway?—but he always had one. The fact that he _couldn't_ answer—no confirmation or denial—made a bell ring off in Gerald's head. Plus, the fact his face kept switching between sickness and a tomato really didn't convince him otherwise.

"At least answer me this: Do you think Sid's right about Helga being pretty...or do you think there's more?"

"I don't know. I mean, I _think_ that I think she's pretty now, but maybe I think maybe there's more. But that can't mean that I _like her_ like her, right? I mean, you've said that I've liked a _ton_ of girls—"

"Whoa, whoa, man! Easy! If you're gonna act like this until we find her, I think you do, man."

Arnold's tirade cut off, his face inflamed. He wouldn't admit out loud or deny to himself that the topic bothered him now just as much as it had a few hours ago.

Gerald tried to relax his own frustrated expression. "I really think you do, man. I mean, just the fact that you can think of reasons _besides_ her being pretty..."

He noticed that his best friend looked like he was gonna pass out or something, so he decided to backtrack. "Maybe you should think on it more. Especially if—_when_—we find her. You know what I say about your thing with girls—you're face never lies. And even though _I _think it's strange, you just gave me a whole dissertation against everything I just said. I'm just saying. _And_ I mean, all of this," he waved his hand over his own face, "it's all written here."

Arnold didn't know if he liked the sound of that. "We should get back to the others."

"Yeah..." The two began their trek back to the rest. "And if you _do_ end up liking her, just know that I think you're bold—and crazy. And I might judge you. I haven't decided yet."

"Thanks, Gerald." He hoped he sounded sarcastic enough.

"Anytime, man."

* * *

Maybe she was still passed out. Yeah, maybe that was it—she was just imagining this.

But even in her dreams—like the last one that made her rethink her love for Slausen late-night runs for sundaes-with-the-works—she had never dreamed about being surrounded by so many people with...green eyes.

She could understand why Dr. Ramirez had put so much reverence into them when he had told that story. And why they had been looking for them so much.

Young, old, tall, short, boy, girl, man, woman, they were all so...beautiful, dressed in beautiful, woven clothing. All with different shades of brown—wet dirt after a storm, ginger snap, sugar cookie, chestnut, honey-brown, mahogany—but all with green eyes. She wasn't a whiz when it came to remembering Crayola's names for every shade of green, but she was smart enough to know there were some variances: some of them looked more hazel, others were jade, ocean-green, dark green, and some were just plain, everyday green—but they were all _green_.

It made it that much harder to track what was going on, why she was in some sort of house or hut missing its front wall, with all this _stuff_ on the walls, and seated on a pallet of sorts in so much pain. She couldn't understand why there was so many of them coming inside and crowding her, whispering reverently and touching her hands and pointing to her eyes. A few had even come with things to place at her feet—gourds, clothing and jewelry, candles, wreaths of flowers, and...entrails.

And with all those changing colors, and the fact that her body looked like she had been in a sewing circle for ninjas, it was that much harder to recollect what had happened when she had come to after the third time—the blindfold, the feeling of being carried, the sharp pain on her back, the bleeding from some of her cuts, the bandages, the voices saying something that wasn't Spanish or anything else she could recognize. She almost missed noticing the colors of their loin cloths and dresses, the tattoos that adorned the shoulders and backs of some, the piercings and bracelets on others, and the headdresses on most of the men.

Headdresses...that made them all look like...like a bunch of...

Football Heads.

The realization was like being hit in the face with cold water. She knew enough to know where she was, to confirm who she was surrounded by. It was enough to make her start freaking out, enough for them to talk in a panic, and make some of the little boys run off on demand.

And maybe her freak out was the greatest thing she ever could have done in her entire life. Because on the heels of those little kids came something made her mouth hang open and her blood stop flowing.

And no, it wasn't the chief, even though he was a pretty intimidating Kahuna, strong and silent in tattoos that covered his entire body, the necklaces, piercings, and thick bracelets on his wrists and ankles and the headdress, adorned with feathers and stones and gems.

It was who was walking behind him.

"...I really hadn't thought she was going to come to so quickly. This is so...I mean, _look _at her—she's just a kid! She's too young to be causing this much trouble and I wouldn't doubt if someone's looking for her right now. The fact that this is all happening isn't good." Her hands placed themselves on her hips and her head shook hard enough to upset the earrings she was wearing.

"Well, none of us thought it was possible for anyone to wander this far in...But, you've been hearing the rumors for yourself...I'm just happy they came back with her, regardless of who they say her company is; she's pretty banged up. We need to check to see how her back is. After you." His hand reached out to touch some of the crowd that had hugged itself around her in the wake of her coming to.

She watched as they came up to her, not bothered at all with the worried expressions, the increase of the shouting and pointing that seemed to be going on, with baited breath. Her heart, she realized, had been going through a lot of crazy things in the past twelve hours. It had gone to being a heart, to stone, to a heart again, to now a piston.

_Yeah, _she thought as she felt the thumping in her chest, _it's _definitely_ a piston._

She jumped a foot in the air as she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Shh shh shh, it's okay, it's okay," she heard a gentle murmuring in her ear. Arnold's mom reached out for a jar that his dad immediately placed in her hands. Helga watched as _Arnold's_ _mom—_she was reacting on a delay—scooped up something the color of peanut butter and slathered it up her arms. She practically levitated from off the pallet, hissing at all the stinging she felt.

"Shh shh shh, it's fine. You're going to be fine." Her voice was the epitome of soothing. "Everything's going to be fine." She proceeded to make Helga lean forward to check her back.

A million thoughts raced through her mind. Yes, in a way, it was. It was so crazy how everything was fine. She even wanted to believe it was lucky how everything was fine.

But in a way, no it wasn't. Everything was more complicated than she had ever thought was possible.

* * *

Mr. Simmons leaned over the edge just far enough to try to see what he was looking for before craning his head into the general direction of the trees. "Are you sure, Cur—?"

"—_HANNIBEL!_" Came the voice from up in the trees.

"Hannibel." The teacher said this with a tinge of annoyance in his voice, but time was of the essence; he really couldn't argue when one of his students were still missing. "This ledge looks like dirt slides down all the time. Do you really think this is where she disappeared?" He asked his question loud enough to be heard.

Behind his thick glasses, Curly gave a roll of his eyes. "He'd believe me if this was Carthage." He leaned over the side of the branch he hung on and cupped his hand to his mouth. "Positive. If you stood where I was, you'd be able to see it easy."

Dr. Ramirez stood at the edge. "If she went down this way, it would next to impossible for her to come out of it without some scratches...at the very least."

"Do you think she's there right now?" Mr. Simmons asked.

"It's hard to tell. That _is_ a long way to go."

"Angelo, we need to get that child back." Sr. Morales said. His face was in a expression of concern and anger.

Arnold couldn't listen to this anymore; he didn't like the idea of Helga being so close and yet hurt and maybe in trouble. He couldn't understand why they were just standing around and not doing anything. If Helga was there, they needed to get her back right now.

"Do you see any paths that can lead down there?"

"No."

The archeologist crouched on his knees and rubbed his chin in thought. "We're going to have to retrace our steps then. Okay, I think if we head back to that one spot where we were yesterday, the one with the fallen trees, we..." Dr. Ramirez's words trailed off as Arnold stormed past him, already walking down the path, journal in hand.

Without talking, Gerald and the others followed, their sneakers crunching along the jungle floor.

* * *

"What do you mean I can't leave?" Her brow furrowed in the lantern light.

For maybe the umpteenth time, Helga felt as if her heart was going through some sort of trauma. In spite of their warnings, she made the motion to stand trying to know she wasn't bothered by the searing pain that her back felt.

There were two or three things that Helga understood.

The first was the most important and the easiest to grasp: She had found Arnold's parents. They were the "them" everything had been so focused on. She couldn't have had any doubts now that she had seen them. Not when she looked over at his mom once before drifting off to exhausted sleep once more, pained by the throbbing along her arms and legs and back.

_She has the same green eyes as him._ Helga had known Arnold's face long enough to know the evidence she needed. She had been looking at those same jellybean-green colored eyes since she was three; there wouldn't have been a prosecution strong enough to convince her otherwise.

The second thing was that finding them meant she was obligated—or maybe _fated—_to take them with her. There wasn't a lot to say about that; she was just trying to ignore the side(s) of her that kept telling her that bringing them back to Arnold wasn't going to change the way he felt—or didn't feel—about her.

The third reason was because she had found them and was committed to bringing them back to Arnold with her, she needed a plan to get out of the Green-Eyes' city and find them. Her mind had been wracking itself trying to come up with a plan good enough to do so, but she didn't know if she could actually take a risk. She couldn't B.S. anything when something this important was on the line; this required a plan that was solid enough to follow, but flexible enough to adapt as needed.

However, their announcement brought on a bout of panic that was so strong in her, any tenuous plans flew out the window of her mind. She was half-surprised she hadn't gone into hysteria or passed out again.

She turned her head at the Green-Eyes seated around her with mystified eyes. She couldn't be sure they could understand everything they were saying, but they had ceased their whispering in the wake of Helga's outburst.

The chief stood at her standing, his green orbs looking at the scene with a furrowed brow. It was only then she understood that she was sneering.

"Is it because, because of them...that you can't go anywhere? That you can't leave the jungle?"

"No, no," Arnold's dad—Miles (she had learned from overhearing their conversations throughout the day that his name was _Miles_)shook his head, "we owe the Green-Eyes our lives."

"Ho—?" She shook her head; she didn't need a life story right now—she needed them walking outside to wherever the heck everybody else was. "Then why can't I leave, why can't _you_ leave?"

Miles looked over at the chief and then back at her. "The Green-Eyes have called for the city to be shut from the inside. The men on the outside report that there is someone in the jungle...and they...they believe that that someone is with...you."

She didn't understand. She didn't care to understand.

She stepped towards the crowd, squinting to get a better look at her feet and looking for gaps in between the bodies until she had reached outside. The moon hung brightly in the sky, undisturbed by anything else in the sky. She sidestepped the other Green-Eyes sitting out and grabbing at her arms and babbling at her.

She had no idea where she was going, which path hugged by the clay houses around her was going to lead her out there, to Arnold. It didn't matter she didn't have a flashlight or anything. And she had no idea what she was going to say to him, to make him come here and see his parents with his own two eyes. She was in a one-track state of mind and it was best to just run with it before she started thinking or something.

She didn't like that she felt a hand restraining her.

Her body whirled around to see his mom, Stella, holding her back. "You're not in any condition to leave."

"I have to!"

"You have too many scratches and your back—"

"It doesn't matter!" She tried to tug her hand away, but thought better of it when she looked into those green eyes of hers. "I'm sorry for yelling, but it really doesn't matter. I have to get back to the people I'm with! I have to, to get home. And you, you have to come with me." Her eyes spied Miles, the chief, and the Green-Eyes rushing up to them. Their arrival brought on too much yelling—too many shouts from the chief, Miles trying to subdue him, and the villagers trying to understand what was going on, some clasping their hands and whispering again and others pointing at her with fingers and angry faces.

It was all too much.

"Please, please, come back and lie down." Stella said again.

"No, no." She squinted her eyes at the sound of all the talking around her; she felt like she was in a cafeteria. "Stop screaming!" She said above all of them. "I have to go! And you do, too! I have to bring you back. You have to get back to Arnold!"

"Arnold?"

The name brought on a silence amongst them all.

Helga felt Stella's hand on hers like a vise. There went her plan to break this gently, preferably en route to the campsite.

"Arnold?" Stella her eyes were growing glassy with tears.

"Arnold?" She looked up at the sound of Miles's deep voice. The moonlight let her chronicle his face going from surprise to disbelief to anger. "He can't be here! Did _he_ tell you to say that? Arnold's—"

"Arnold's _here_. I know it seems crazy—you don't even know me and I can't prove much of anything right now. But I know _you_ and I know Arnold and I _swear _I'm telling the truth. Please come with me and I promise I'll take you back to...Arnold."

"_Arnold._" The chief looked at her, his mouth open. "Arnold." His eyes lifted to the sky. He turned to the rest of the Green-Eyes and raised his arms, the tattoos that marked them, deep black in the pale light. "_Arnold._"

"_Arnold_..."

"..._Arnold_"

"..._Arnold_..."

Helga listened as the name lifted from their mouths, in all those intonations and pitches, like she was listening to a prayer.

* * *

"Arnold. Hey, Arnold. We gotta stop, man." Gerald panting, crouched down and rested his hands on his knees.

For the first time in hours, Arnold made the effort to look behind Gerald and see the state of half of his class.

"Is it me, or do we not know where we're going?" Sid asked, his eyes whipping from side to side. His hands gripped Harold's shirt at the sound of a rustling around; he could've _sworn_ he had seen something.

Harold didn't answer in any way that may have made sense, just whimpered. Regardless if his sounds meant that he thought the same as his friend, he wasn't going to be the one to say anything.

They had been at it for hours, slowly combing the plateau where Curly had found the the dirt slide towards and venturing down towards the thicket of the valley they had seen from afar upon their arrival. To say that there was a trail was an understatement; he could practically map out the movement involved, the spots where it looked like the branches and twigs had been upset and where the grass was crushed and where it wasn't.

There was one set of footprints, then two, three, and then two again.

"_There was more than one person here,"_ he announced to the rest of the group. _"And if Helga came here before, she's not here anymore."_ He tried not to make them feel guilty for what they had been whispering and thinking about since they started, but he couldn't deny the twist of smugness he felt as Mr. Simmons and a few others avoided eye contact with him.

It was probably their guilt that hadn't let any of them suggest a break until Eugene had finally admitted that he had to use the bathroom. And it was probably their guilt that had led to no protests to the continuation of their search as the sun went down and the moon peeked out from the leaves of the trees above.

Arnold understood what his best friend meant. Without moving any closer to the rest of the group, Arnold placed his bag down and proceeded to place the journal inside.

Sid made a move to do the same when he whipped his eyes to his right again. He was sure that he had seen something that time.

Rhonda sat to the floor with her eyes clenched without complaint; the dirt she had collected seemed to be a part of her now. "I'm going crazy, I'm losing my mind. Why do these things happen around _me_? Why am _I _still here? Why can't I go home?" Her eyes briefly held contact with Arnold's and she lowered her voice.

And then decided she really didn't care about watching what she said anymore. "I am going to _kill_ Helga when I see her. No, Nadine," she snapped at her friend, "don't _tell_ me to be quiet! I am going to _kill_ Helga when we find her."

Dr. Ramirez threw down the bags he had been carrying with a thud. "Let's make this the headquarters for the night. We don't have to set up tents or anything but have to make the campfire as soon as possible. Hernando, take a flashlight and a few men out for some twigs." The way he articulated himself didn't make it seem like a favor and Sr. Morales's face reflected that. He pointed to two men and headed towards a particularly large bush before his body went completely still.

"_¡Detenganse!_" His arm came up to stop his companions._ "_There's something here!" He shouted, brandishing his machete.

From all around them in the darkness of the jungle came figures. Lithe enough, but there was no denying their strength from the bulk in their arms. Or the fear they inspired by the looks of their tattooed faces. As everyone around his began to scream and panic, Arnold stood completely still. He wasn't surprised to see them, their eyes seeming to glow in the moonlight as they finally spied him through the panic his worried classmates. Maybe he had been hoping for them to show up.

"I KNEW it!" Sid.

He showed no fear as he watched one pull Gerald to his feet, his best friend's steps unsteady with the bag over his head, and made his way over. Arnold thought he recognized him from the first night, but he couldn't be entirely sure.

Arnold found himself eye-to-chest with the Green-Eyed man.

He imagined himself asking one question: _Do you have Helga?_ But he held his tongue.

Arnold's eyes closed as he felt the bag going over his head.

* * *

Helga knew that she was supposed to be fighting her way through the jungle by now. She was supposed to be on her way back to Arnold. She was supposed to have his parents in tow. She was supposed to be..._doing_ something.

But, she realized ironically, that the very thing she was trying to get towards was the very thing that was stopping her.

They wanted to know _everything_. It took all of five seconds for them to bombard her with questions. And it took even less time for her one-track mindset to go out of the window.

"How did he get here?"

"Is he tall?"

"Does he like sports?"

"What's his favorite food?"

"Is he funny?"

"Does he like music?"

This was nothing compared to the questions she believed the Green-Eyes were probably asking her; she just couldn't figure out what they were saying.

But it wasn't like she minded; she could've talked about him all day. "He told me he won a contest or something...He's almost as tall as me...He likes jazz music...He's kinda funny sometimes...He likes baseball and, and he skateboards everywhere...He likes souvlaki _a lot_—with fries inside." Their faces were like a picture book, always changing with every answer she gave.

"How long have you known him?"

"I...I've known him since we were little, since we were three...so I guess if there was anybody who could find you that wasn't Arnold, it would probably be me." She gave a kind of sheepish smile.

Stella gave her a smile. "So, you two are pretty close?"

Helga dropped Stella's hands at the question. Her face had to be red—it _had_ to be. "Uh, I guess. But, but it's not like we're boyfriend or girlfriend or anything. I mean, it's, it's not like he's _ugly_ or anything—a lot of girls like him, I guess, but none of them are as close as..." She realized as their faces became more and more confused at what was coming out of her mouth, she kept rambling. She had to backtrack—_fast_.

"Why...why..._why _ask _me_ questions about Arnold when, when _you_ can come with me and see him for yourself? Please, _please_ come with me." She grabbed Stella's hands once more.

"We can't." Stella let Helga's hands go.

There it was again, the problem that had stopped her before. She didn't understand. Miles mirrored the exact expression of his wife's. Even Kahuna and some of the others looked downtrodden.

"It's not like we don't want to go. Under any other circumstances, I'm sure the Green-Eyes would let us." Stella looked over at the chief.

"'Circumstances?'"

Miles hesitated, searching for the right words to say. "Our lives have been saved by The Green-Eyed People time and time again. It was a...terrible time when we were welcomed into their tribe. With all their secrets, they've opened themselves to us a lot. We are part of the Green-Eyes now. And we promised ourselves to be bound to the same things they are bound to.

"...The Green-Eyes believe there is someone that threatens to destroy the one thing they hold dear."

Kahuna grabbed Helga's hand and looked up at the night sky. Regally, he balled his free hand, smacking it to his chest, and then pointing to the back of their city.

_'The men on the outside report that there is someone in the jungle...and they...they believe that that someone is with...you.'_

Helga's eyes slowly widened.

"You think that person is in the jungle...and that _I _was with that person...which means that Arnold. Is. With. That. Person."

* * *

"...tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take OUR FREEDOM!"

"Curly! Curly, quoting _Braveheart_ is not helping with our—ow!—" Mr. Simmons stumbled over a tree root, "current situation. Please, approach—"

"_SCREW THAT!_ CURLY, SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! IF I EVER GET FREE, I'LL WRING YOUR NECK OUT!" Harold yelled, breaking off the string of whimpers that he had been doing. From the way it sounded, a few of their captors had to hold him down.

Arnold chose not to speak up with everyone else, trying to steady his walk to match the sure footing of the person guiding him. He didn't know how long they had been traveling through the jungle with bags on their heads, but it felt like hours. And between Curly's shouts and the general exclamations of fear that everyone kept doing, he had been trying to think.

And for all the things he knew, he wasn't remembering anything that would actually help.

The Green-Eyed People were always described to him as being secretive, not violent. But all of _this_, taking him and the entire class hostage, it was just _too_ confusing, _too _left field. But then again, no one had ever _seen_ the hidden city; no one knew the consequences of stumbling upon it...maybe this was it.

He tried to reason that them finding them was a _good_ thing, that they were the only ones who could've ran into Helga. But he didn't like to think about Helga being found in the same way. And he really didn't like the idea of them _not_ finding her.

There was nothing he could do but continue not to say anything.

He felt the pressure of a hand being pressed against his chest to stop him. Behind him, there were the sounds of everyone else doing the same, exclaiming and grumbling along the way.

"Wh, wh, what's going on? What're they doing?" Rhonda asked.

"I, I, I reckon we're stopping to prepare us for whatever they're gonna do next." Stinky.

"What? Like, like cut off our heads or something?" Sid.

Shouts came from his classmates now. Harold lapsed back into his whimpering.

"Everybody, everybody, just calm down. I'll figure out something." Arnold yelled.

"_What_, Arnold? How are you _possibly_ going to reason with them with a bag over your head?" Rhonda snapped.

He would've loved to give her an answer for that, but he was being pushed forward. He tried to calm himself, to be aware of anything around him—the men, everybody else, a wall maybe—but the sound of his heart thudding in his ears blocked out everything else. Time sped up as he felt himself being pushed one way and pulled another way; his breathing was growing harsher and harsher.

And with one final push, the bag was yanked off and he found himself being able to see again, blinking against the glare of the moonlight.

He was standing on a ledge facing the mouth of a huge quarry. His eyes whipped from side to side, feeling like he was staring at something straight out of History class. From where he stood, the largest buildings and roads glowed white in the moonlight, and the rest, smaller buildings, pin-pricked close by in little clusters. Trees peppered throughout the spaces of these gaps; a strip of the jungle seemed to fringe the edge of the city, right before reaching the other side of the quarry. Plumes of smoke rose from several places, curling beyond the horizon and towards what looked like the mountain range.

It was too beautiful to look away from. He didn't even tear his eyes away to look at the rest of the class, but they were saying everything he wanted:

"Holy sh—"

"...Whoa..."

"Glorious, beautiful..."

"...wow..."

"It's bigger than the football field at school!"

"...most beautiful thing..."

The Green-Eyes that had placed the bag over his head suddenly came into view, the moon throwing dark shadows over the tattooed portion of his face. His arm rose slowly and pointed towards the quarry's center, where the roads all seemed to converge like a village square, and began walking down a worn path.

Arnold followed, a few steps ahead of everyone else.

It was probably beautiful up close. There were probably things that he was supposed to be taking in as he walked up an incline to the supposed destination—the buildings and stuff, he guessed. He noticed the people well enough, their green eyes almost illuminated in the light as the ones still in their houses ventured out, pointing at all of them and whispering, but still keeping their distance. He didn't really turn to look at them. His heart was thudding again; he needed to pay attention to whatever was supposed to be going on.

They reached the village square the moment the incline leveled off, faced with a large crowd of Green-Eyes.

And in the midst of the Green-Eyes, there was Helga, her hair and skin like an ember of sorts amongst all those other faces in the moonlight. It was funny how easily he recognized her and all the tension he had been feeling disappeared the moment he saw her. She made a moment to move toward him, but a hand on her shoulder kept her in place. She stilled, her head turning to face the crowd around her, and acquiescing to their directions. Her forehead creased the moment her blue eyes landed back on his.

Arnold looked beyond her to see just where that hand came from. To her left, he noticed an especially tall Green-Eyes—the chief if any of the _stuff _that was on him was a clue.

But behind her.

There was no way he would second guess that the two people standing behind Helga were _them_. Not when he been waiting for this exact moment for practically his entire life. Seeing them as they stood, in the clothing and jewelry of the Green-Eyes standing around them, he realized that the images of them in their jungle gear were his imagination. But everything else was real: he was tall like Grandpa had said he was with graying temples; she was petite and lithe with his eyes, no, no—his entire face. Even the look on their faces right now, in the midst of that crowd across from him in that square, was exactly as he pictured it.

He felt himself pulling away from everybody else and their exclamations and yelling towards the crowd that stood on the other side. "Mom...Dad?"

"...Arnold?" It must've been the blood rushing to his brain that made their movements slow as they walked past Helga and began to make their way to him. "...Arnold?"

"_Arnold...Arnold...Arnold..._" All around them, the Green-Eyes around began whispering, and a few began bowing, even the guards that had brought them inside. Arnold vaguely realized it sounded exactly like how that one Green-Eyed person had sounded that night on the field. He let the sound of his name become a sort of white noise.

They were closer now. The questions he had always had for them were bubbling to the surface; the relief he felt about the whole deal was taking off the weight he usually felt was on his shoulders. He had fulfilled the promise he made the night he had left home. They were _them_ and they were found.

And like a needle popping a balloon, the euphoria Arnold felt suddenly went away with a scream from Lila. "Dr. Ramirez! Sr. Morales!"

Deep, guttural voices suddenly rose in the night air and the fourteen-year-old felt a push against his back as students pushed themselves out of the way, slamming into the warriors that escorted them into the village and screaming.

"_He's_ _bleeding! He's_ _bleeding!_"

"He's got a huge knife-thing!"

"Get off of me! Get off!"

"Arnold! Arnold!" Helga suddenly snapped to life, trying to run towards the scene, only to be held back by the chief. His eyes looked at the other side of the square with a grim look.

"ARNOLD!" Gerald yelled, fighting fruitlessly as one of the men from the village subdued his arms as he tried to move. "RUN, MAN! RUN!"

He realized the panic around him and tried to do something, but it was already too late. He felt something pull on his hair and found himself being pulled down. With wide eyes, he found himself staring into the face of Sr. Morales.

"Finally."

Arnold felt the strain on his back as the older man wrapped his arm around the fourteen-year-old's neck.

* * *

_**While Helga was not the one who is supposed to find Arnold's parents first in The Jungle Movie, upon encountering the Green-Eyes, they are attracted to her ferocity and worship her in the manner of a demi-god. Arnold is, of course, supposed to be treated with the same reverence as his birth silenced all of nature.**_

* * *

_a/n: Yeah yeah yeah! Chapter 6! Helga finds the Green-Eyes and Arnold is captures by the Green-Eyes. Very happy that I finished it. This was hard; I couldn't get it to the place I wanted. There was so much I wanted to do, but I have plenty of time, I guess. R&R._

_s/n: I'll be starting classes on Tuesday so please, please Story/Author Alert me and I'll do my best to keep up. with this. Reviews are very encouraging (hint, hint)._


	9. Chapter 7

**STOP! STOP! STOP! **

**BEFORE YOU EVEN _THINK_ ABOUT READING THIS YOU _HAVE_ TO GO BACK TO (the newly extended) CHAPTER SIX! THANKS!**

* * *

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

**Translation(s):**

_**Burro - **_**"Donkey"**

_**El Nino – **_**(Male) "Child" **

* * *

**Chapter 7**

"Hey, hey, _hey_, _hey_!" Sr. Morales yelled at the warriors, backing away from the sight of their machetes and dragging the fourteen-year-old with him. "If any of you come closer, I'll kill him here and now! Drop your weapons—_Drop them!_" Sr. Morales spun the two of them around, the fourteen-year-old's sneakers kicking up dust as he stumbled and failed to right himself.

"Arnold! _Arnold!_" Helga tried to bring herself from behind the chief and ran towards Sr. Morales. She wasn't going to be stopped so easily and yet, nothing she did could bring herself from around Kahuna's frame. "Let me go! Let me _go_! He has Arnold!" She felt tears springing into her eyes, hot and angry tears, as she tried and failed to squirm from his grasp.

"I said drop your weapons!" Sr. Morales head whipped from side to side, watching for any moves that the warriors made. "You're not going to do anything...because...if you come near me..." His breathing became a bit more ragged as he watched the crowd give him the space he desired.

The Green-Eyes kept exchanging looks, their grips on their machete handles tight. After a few beats, they dropped their swords with a disharmonious _clang_, their murderous, angry eyes still trained on the man.

"Now, now." Miles said loud enough for all to hear. "Calm down. None of us are going to do anything. Now, just let him and everybody else go, La Sombra."

"'La Sombra?' Who the hell is 'La Sombra?'" Helga whispered, looking at Kahuna. He didn't make a motion to move, but his eyes flicked towards her at the utterance of the name; his face was in a deep frown.

_La Sombra? _Arnold remembered the name written in that one entry of his dad's journal, the one about how they stole La Corazon back from the river pirate. He had always imagined the way La Sombra looked, a muscled man with a hidden face—not the medium-built, graying "village leader" he had been traveling with all week.

But there wasn't any way he could be confused anymore.

There was a machete in the man's hand and he became more aware of it as it replaced La Sombra's arm around his neck.

"So, you recognize me even after all this time."

Miles nodded, his hands resting on Stella's shoulders. "You look different."

"As do the two of you," he nodded and focused on Stella standing still in the moonlight, "especially her. It seems we both survived, thanks to you. What a wonderful doctor you are."

"Why is Ar—why are there _kids_ with you? Did, did you kidnap them?" Stella asked, stepping forward, but yielding to Miles' grip on her shoulders.

"Kidnapping wasn't even necessary; all these children are here because of what I could call a happy chance of fate. It seems that you, _Senor Gringo_, left something behind a long, long time ago, a book with a map of San Lorenzo. And your son found it.

"It's enough to make the years I've spent playing 'Secret Treasure' worth it. I must admit, I may have still been playing in the dirt if it wasn't for _Arnold _here." His mouth split into a Cheshire grin. _"_He truly is amazing. No wonder the Green-Eyes still revere him so highly. Which is why I am convinced that no harm will come to me as long as he is here. You may even escort me to the doorsteps of what I'm here for."

Stella's forehead creased. "Are you really here for...? Even after all this ti—"

"_Time hasn't stopped me from getting the one thing I've wanted! _No matter how long it took me, the years of pretending, the, the..._partnerships_ I had to form with mindless fools like you, _nothing_ has stopped me from the one thing I've wanted..."

"La...Cora..zon..." Arnold rasped.

"Yes." La Sombra whispered. Arnold felt the blade of the machete on his skin and then a sharpness on his skin. "Oops," La Sombra said loud enough for everyone to hear, "it seems I almost cut him a little too close." His voice was coy with a chuckle at the end.

"ARNOLD!" A few voices shouted from both sides, but none as loud as Helga, Stella, and Miles'.

"Now you know I'm not joking." La Sombra waved an 'S' in the air. "Now show me where it is."

Stella and Miles looked upon the scene, the panic in their eyes turning into resign. With slow movements, they stepped to the side. The chief followed, carrying Helga in tow. Slowly the crowd of Green-Eyes followed,their sharp green orbs staring at the old man and the boy as they walked through the parted crowd. Arnold stared ahead as he was pushed forward, the staring at the moon floating above the mountain peaks.

As they made their way through, a long wail from the mouths of the Green-Eyes began.

"I've been thinking for awhile that this is quite an unexpected turn," Stinky said, breaking the relative silence of the group as they pushed through the jungle. "Who would've thought the stoic Sr. Morales, with whom we've traveled with for these past few days, was actually a dangerous antagonist who now holds our classmate Arnold in captivity?

"Why, you could almost swear this was the plot of a movie or something."

"Dude, this isn't the time." Sid said, nudging him to let him see that Helga was looking straight at them with a look of anger on her face.

They—Arnold and Sr. Morales (it was hard to think of him as anything else), Kahuna, her and the warriors, Miles and Stella, and everybody else—stepped through the rough terrain of the strip of jungle behind the city. Sr. Morales and Arnold were at the front, but with the broad frames of Kahuna and the disarmed warriors, she couldn't see what was going on. So she kept walking, opting not to say anything.

She _hated_ this. She hated that she thought she could still hear the crying of the Green-Eyes even after being so far away. She hated that Miles and Stella were here to see Arnold captured by the bad guy. She hated that she didn't have superpowers or something so she could just beat up the bad guys, bring Arnold back to her, and then take everyone home.

She looked over to grab Kahuna's attention but found that he was distracted, looking forward with a tight jaw. Her eyes followed his glance and saw that through the last parting of the trees, there was a large set of stairs leading to the sky before them. Her eyes trailed above and around, staring into the shale light of the wall that hugged the flight of stairs. "What is this?"

"This is Alom's Strike," Miles answered looking over at her. His voice didn't have the same timber it had had before. "The Green-Eyes believe that Alom, a deity re—"

"—hit his head really hard to make the world. I know."

"Yes. Alom's Strike is believed to be the first place where Alom first struck himself and where Anka placed her heart. La Corazon is here."

She stared at the steps and above where the moon was sinking. "How?"

"This is a limestone quarry. Its inside was hollowed out into a temple long ago and La Corazon was placed inside to be kept from the light of day.

"La Sombra, he said now, yelling so that he could be heard, "stop this. You know you won't leave here with La Corazon—you know they won't allow it to happen."

"Hernando, you can't take La Corazon from them!" Dr. Ramirez, riled up by Miles' words, spoke up. Helga almost forgot that he was here, the memory of Mr. Morales striking him falling to the side in lieu of the current circumstances. She stared at the the blood drying on the side of his face. "La Corazon is an important part of the Green-Eyes' livelihood and without it, their whole way of life is destroyed—you know this!"

Only Arnold could hear the rumble in his voice as he chuckled and walked up some more. "Do I?"

"Yes you do! _You_ told me that!"

As small as Sr. Morales was from where Helga stood, he truly looked menacing in the moonlight. Her eyes kept switching her glance from him to Arnold.

"It's funny how you of all people, Angelo, are suddenly struck with such a need of preservation. You had no problem with 'destroying' their way of life when you told me you wanted to come here. You've had no problem with any of my plans whatsoever. Do you remember?"

"I asked you to bring me here so I could let the world know about them, to understand and protect them! Not to steal from them!"

"Once again, you had no problem putting your trust in me. Did you really believe that I wouldn't still be attracted to one of the world's most valuable treasures? Or that my men and I would follow your every stupid whim and play the role as your _burros _with no alternate plans of our own? That I wouldn't hesitate to beat your head with the blunt end of a machete when given the chance? If you did, then you're even stupider than I believed you to be."

"Please," Stella said finally. She had been quiet throughout the whole trip through the city and into the jungle forest, but now moved from behind Miles. "Please. Just let La Corazon, Arnold, and everyone go, please! As a favor to me, to repay your debt to me!"

The older man's face scrunched up in disgust. "I paid my debt to you and your husband; I spared your lives." He walked up the steps a bit more. "I let you go—_that _was our debt, and I paid it. Whatever you believe I owe you now is the past.

"Do not believe that my weaknesses then will have any bearing to now. I have your miracle child with me and I know that none of these Green-Eyes will lay a hand on me. La Corazon, as important as it is to them, it can't possibly be greater than life itself. Especially the life of _El Nino de Alom_! But if you touch me, well, I think you know what will happen."

* * *

The two reached the top of the steps to the grassy ledge and walked to a hole in the ground.

The fourteen-year-old was pushed out of his captor's grasp and stumbled to right himself. "Pick up the rope over there." Arnold complied, yanking out a thick, woven cord from the inside of the hole.

"You are holding the only way in and out. If you try to run away, if you try to play hero, if you don't do everything I say," his voice grew angrier; his weapon shook with every word, "you won't live to talk about it! I'll tear you apart and leave your body in there! Do you understand?

Arnold nodded.

"Go."

Arnold grabbed the rope and walked to the hole, lowering himself down. He could hear the yelling from up above as he reached the mouth of the hole. His green eyes stayed on the moon as he sunk himself down into the earth.

It was a tunnel. Not a tunnel that was so small you had to crawl through it, but more like the kind where the only way for two people to go through was to follow in a line.

Arnold squinted against the light shining in his face. "Take it." He didn't fight the flashlight being forced in his hand. "Walk before me." He felt the edge of the machete poking into his stomach and then his back. "Go."

He complied.

Their breathing and footsteps became the only sounds heard as they began the trek. With every misstep he did, for every time his hand pressed into the wall to better feel out his surroundings, Arnold felt a rising panic inside him. How was he going to get out of this one? How was he supposed to save La Corazon from La Sombra?

"My mom said that you owed her something," he didn't know why the words came out just then. He was _supposed_ to be trying to find a way out of this situation.

He half-scoffed, half-laughed. "_Si._ She believes that after more than ten years, I owe her something, but I've already repaid her—I let her and your father keep their lives."

Arnold's blood ran cold at the words. "H-how?"

"A long, long time ago, your parents were responsible for La Corazon slipping from my fingers. With it back in the Green-Eyes' possession, I was left to once again find its trail. It would take me three years to find it again. Three years of combing through the wrong places, coming across temple after temple, but never the door to where they had taken La Corazon. And three years of mutinies and fevers and sicknesses. I saw many of my crew dwindle into smaller and smaller numbers.

"It was a storm that had somehow led my men and I on a path that seemed promising, a Green-Eyed temple deeply embedded within the terrain. And when my men and I finally came across it, we did not find La Corazon, but them instead..."

_It didn't matter that he was sick; he had been imagining this moment, the scenario playing out again and again, and always going in a million directions. _

_But he liked the real thing, he liked that he had caught them when they were least expecting it. A smile crossed his face and he felt the red-hot pleasure of pride as his men moved with the slight wave of his machete._

_He let the the man's hands scramble around and scoop up their things into a burlap sack, the sound of glass tinkling. He noticed their things strewn about the temple altar. It was only because he had been living along the land for so long that he could tell that this was their headquarters: their sleeping bags, the fire ashes, the clothes hanging to dry._

_He let his eyes lock with the man's. This man had been so confident the last time they had met and had taken away his possession. And now here he was, bleary-eyed and dirty and unshaven, off-guard._

_And the woman. The woman lying beside him. He watched her eyes roll around drunkenly in her head. She seemed to have problems understanding what was going on, only staring as his men walked around and tipped things over and ripped things apart._

_The man's arm went around her protectively and she shivered slightly._

_He took his machete from his belt loop and brandished in the man's face. "You remember me?"_

_The man's eyes never turned away from the steel edge. He pressed his wife closer to him, not caring when she coughed wetly into his shoulder. "Yes." _

_His mouth spit into a wide grin. "Good."_

"I took them hostage and left a note to the Green-Eyes telling them what I wanted and where they could find me. And for all the love you have for those people, it took them weeks before they sought me out.

"Of course, I knew nothing about the sleeping sickness plaguing the Green-Eyes. Some of my men had had it and died, but I just believed it was a jungle fever, one that would stop killing my men when we found La Corazon and left the jungle...It was only when my men began to notice that some of their symptoms were like your mother's—"

"—my mom? My mom had the sleeping sickness?"

"_What is wrong with her?" He was screaming now, his fingers clawing up and down his neck and arms. "The day we found you, she had a fever and it hasn't broke yet. Two days later she's breathing like that. WHY DOES SHE SOUND LIKE THAT? WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?"_

_The man looked up, pausing in wiping her forehead._

"_It's...It's called the sleeping sickness. There is a strain of it in the jungle. The Green-Eyes have it and we've been trying to find a cure for them...and now, she has it. The itching and the fever are symptoms of the first stage; her breathing like that means that she's getting into the second stage." The man went back to wiping her head. _

_His arm stopped clawing at his skin and he looked at her now. Her head turned to look at him, her green eyes staring through him, not at him. _

"_Arnold. I want to go back to Arnold." She whispered._

"_Arnold?"_

"_Our son." The man answered. He smoothed her hair with his hand. _

"_Well, I want La Corazon. And until I get what I want, you don't get what you want." With heavy steps, he walked away from the two, his hand gingerly beginning to scratch again._

Arnold was jerked forward at the feeling of sharpness of the machete on his back. "You had the sleeping sickness, too?"

"Yes. My men began to notice some of her symptoms amongst each other and began to demand that we leave them behind in the jungle and find La Corazon another way. Your father's pleas for me to free them spurred them even more; they believed that with her being there, the sickness was causing them to get it, too—none of them realized my condition out of fear for their own bodies. My refusal was beginning to cause a mutiny amongst them. I began to ready my weapons against any uprisings.

"The night I feared the beginning of their rebellion was the night Green-Eyes made themselves known..."

_He was staring into their liquid-emerald eyes in the moonlight, the dark markings on their bodies. There were already some on the deck, fighting and subduing his men, with hands over their mouths; the rest of them climbing from their kayaks unto his boat like watching spiders climb up a wall. He didn't doubt that there were more probably crawling around in the jungle._

_But there was nothing he could do to stop them._

_He stared into the face of the big Green-Eyes, the one with his fingers wrapped around his neck. He could still see his spit glistening on this one's face and he felt a warmth of pride. No monkey was going to simply take over his ship and not feel his wrath in some way. If only he had his gun, he'd make an example of this one._

"_Trade me...La Corazon..." he choked, "for their lives." His mouth split into a wide smile as the Green-Eyes' grip tightened._

_His men shook off their captors' hands, cursing his name and snarling out threats. Let them come and try to fight him; he could slit all their throats—finding a new crew wouldn't be hard._

"_We'll trade our lives for...your lives." The man said in the midst of the yelling. Silence took over the ship as his words made their way through. Out the corner of his eye, he watched the man come into to view. His eyes strained to see what was in his hands._

"_In this bag are the vials of the antidote for the sleeping sickness. My wife made them for the Green-Eyes, but I'll give them all to you—for your men...and you. Just let us go."_

_He chuckled. "If you leave this ship with the Green-Eyes, you and your wife will never see your son again! You'll _die _with these stupid people. And if you don't die, I'll kill you when I find you again!" _

"_No! I'll give you these vials only if you leave us alone! Stella really believed that these vials were the cure to the strain of the sleeping sickness, but I will give them all to you and your men if you let me and her go. I won't let her stay sick on this boat."_

"_And your boy?"_

"…._We'll find our own way to him."_

_His eyes switched to those of the big Green-Eyes and back to the man. "Fine," he rasped. You will give me every drop of the antidote. And then you will get off my ship!" He slid to the ground breathing deeply as he felt the grip loosen on his neck. He felt the weight of the bag as it was placed in his lap._

_The Green-Eyes didn't leave as quickly as they appeared. But they did leave with the man and his wife in tow. _

He made a scoffing noise. "I thought I had every vile they had had; it was after all, part of our agreement. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that _gringos_ are good liars.

"Of course, that doesn't matter, because I have you. And soon, I will have La Corazon."

Arnold felt the ground below him dip and he grabbed the wall to steady himself. His panicked breathing echoed off the walls.

"Point that flashlight forward, boy...What is that?"

Arnold pointed the light and saw what La Sombra was talking about. Off in the distance was something big...flickering.

He didn't stumble at La Sombra's pushing; he too, wanted to know what was there. Breathing heavily with the few more steps he made, he felt the ground dip again. But he was ready for it.

What he wasn't ready for what was he found.

There, right before him was a room, a part of the earth that was hollowed out. There _was_ light, two rows of candles arranged around the room. And the walls covered with carvings and painted in bright colors. It was hard to remember the rising sense of panic he was supposed to have when looking at the bright blues and greens and golds...or the large etching of an eye staring back at him...

…or what was in the middle of the room, standing on a pillar that reached his chest.

_La Corazon..._

It didn't look like a heart. It looked like a small, squat man in meditation, pressing his hands and feet together as tightly as he could, mouth open in a chant or prayer. And it was green, jade green. It was so beautiful.

He felt himself being shoved to the side near a set of the candles. His heart twisted as he saw La Sombra's hands grasp La Corazon. The man raised the artifact above his head, his breathing heavy and guttural.

"Yes. Yes." His mouth split into smile.

* * *

_a/n: Here it is! Chapter 7! I am sorry it has taken this long for me to give you this one—school, life, etc. etc. I hope you heeded my warning at the beginning of the chapter—made it big just for you, you wonderful readers you. _

_So yes, Mr. Morales is actually Sr. Morales. I had planned on this since maybe the second chapter. I wonder if anybody realized it? I'd like to think I'm that good, but it was probably seen from a mile away. (Oh, well.) As far as La Corazon's design goes, there is a picture of it on the Hey Arnold! wiki. And it more or less does look the way I described it. _

_Anyway R&R! And see you in Chapter 8!_


	10. Chapter 8

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

_Synopsis: Arnold and his classmates, in their search for Helga, are captured by the mysterious Green-Eyed warriors and led to their hidden city. Not only does he find her but, he also finds his parents. However, his reunion with both them and Helga is destroyed by Sr. Morales, who reveals himself to be the river pirate La Sombra. Taking Arnold hostage, La Sombra drags him into Alom's Strike, where the fabled La Corazon is kept._

_La Sombra now holds La Corazon in his hands..._

* * *

**Chapter 8**

"He's...he's _gone!_"

It was only with force in the silent seconds Arnold's football-shaped head disappeared that Helga was able to tear her eyes away from Alom's Strike and follow the sound of Stella's voice.

The corners of Stella's eyes began to tear as she looked past the blockade of La Sombra's men in confusion. Her hands flew to cover her mouth and her had began to shake in disbelief. "I don't...H-how could this have happened?" She turned to the rest of the group, staring helplessly at everyone before landing her gaze on her husband. "What journal, Miles?"

Miles pulled his hands from his scalp and stared at her wide-eyed and dumbstruck. "The journal... I kept a journal when I first came here with...Eduardo. Before we left Mom and Dad's, I reached the last page and put it in the attic...I, I _barely _remember putting a map in it. After all this time...

"It's not crazy that Arnold found it, but I don't understand how he could've found La Sombra. He didn't go...looking for him, did he? Why is this happening this way?"

"It's my fault!" Dr. Ramirez blurted out. "Arnold met La Sombra because of me." The lightening of the night sky into dawn made it easier to see him wiping the caked, drying blood off his face and unto his shirt sleeve.

Mr. Simmons looked over at the archeologist as angrily as was possible for him. "_Your_ faul—Dr. Ramirez, you, you _knew_ Sr. Morales was a dangerous criminal and purposely put all of our lives at stake?"

"I didn't know that Hernando was La Sombra!" He turned to Stella and Miles. "Please, please believe me! I came to San Lorenzo a few years back through The Smith Institution of Anthropology, just like you, to work on a dig. I met Hernando when I was looking for working to help with the labor—I had no idea that he was La Sombra." He scoffed. "I don't there had been a sighting of La Sombra for years—long enough to be out of sight and out of mind.

"I was always interested in the legend of the Green-Eyes and La Corazon, and had always imagining meeting these people, and it was his encouragement that spurred me to look for both it and these mysterious people. He and I began to search every map we could find for their territory, but never coming close."

"So, when Arnold came with a map inside your journal and his desire to find you, Hernando insisted this was the map and opportunity I was looking for. I was so dedicated to the idea of finding such a...ancient society of people it never once crossed my mind of his true intentions. At no point did I think if we found you, he would take Arnold..."

Stella's eyes narrowed as he finished and her gaze traveled to the top of Alom's Strike. "I'm going in there and getting Arnold back." She didn't look too happy when Miles gently pulled her back. "Miles..."

"I know, but we can't. Not yet. There's still La Sombra's men, and everyone else...Alom's Strike wouldn't give us an advantage; if we tried to corner him, and did something wrong, he'd follow through on his threat. We have to wait for them to come out." Miles drooped his head and whispered something in his wife's ear. The two looked over at the chief.

Helga's eyes followed. Kahuna and a few of the other warriors were staring back into the thicket of the jungle. Her eyes shifted from their heavy, tattooed faces to the terrain. She couldn't remember seeing anything when they had walked through, not even the birds chirping inside. But for a brief moment, almost too brief to actually tell, Kahuna's face relaxed.

He and the others suddenly looked away, but kept their ears craned towards the thicket.

Her blue eyes narrowed at the behavior. _That's weird._

"Arnold won't come to harm with La Sombra while in Alom's Strike. He's read about Arnold's birth in the journal."

"What does Arnold's birth have to do with anything?" Mr. Simmons asked, bewildered.

"Everything!" Stella said. "Everything. The Green-Eyes believe that Arnold's birth was special."

"They believe that _all_ births are special," Miles corrected. "However, the ones that occur during unusual circumstances—a tornado, a meteor shower, anything out of the ordinary—are divine. Marked by the gods. The day Arnold was born, we couldn't reach the town because a volcano erupted in San Lorenzo and were offered sanctuary in a Green-Eyed temple. The chief has told me that he was among the few that offered aid to us and witnessed the same thing we did: Arnold's birth stopping the volcano and silencing the entire jungle. They believe that Arnold is truly a miracle baby, sent by Alom himself to perform miracles for them.

"It's probably because of that that La Sombra insisted Arnold go down with him. They wouldn't hurt La Sombra for La Corazon's safety, of course, but having Arnold guarantees that. They wouldn't do anything to harm someone they believed is blessed by their gods."

The far away tweeting of the birds sounded as everyone let those words seep in.

"So, Arnold's birth was marked by a strange, extraordinary occurrence in nature?" Stinky half-whispered. He paused for a second, but then, "You know what? That whole, dang-blasted story makes sense, considering it's Arnold and all. He's always doing miracles."

"Yeah, like with Stoop Kid." Sid piped up.

"And Monkey Man and Pigeon Man."

"And the lady with the pink wig, eye-patch, peg leg."

"And the float at that parade when we was at one-eighteen."

"And saving my life!"

Helga's forehead burrowed, but she didn't snap at them to shut them up. Kahuna and the first warriors had gone back to staring again. The rest had spread out amongst the rest of the class, but kept staring back at the jungle. _They are looking for something. _But the only thing in there were birds and she couldn't see them—only hear them.

"Even if La Sombra keeps Arnold safe until after he gets to La Corazon, that doesn't mean he'll be safe after they get out. Miles, we need to get over there." Her mouth tightened.

"I know, but we have to make sure everyone here will be taken care of...they were louder this time. La Sombra's men haven't noticed it yet. They'll be here soon."

Helga overheard, but kept her eyes on the warriors. Her eyes narrowed as she saw one of them pucker their lips and let out a series of low whistles.

From the thicket came another set of whistles, kinda loud-ish ones...and then, through the thick brush, she swore she saw something big...move.

Kahuna and the rest of the warriors around her seemed to go very still, but their legs and arms were very taut. Stella and Miles had parted, their bodies stilling in the same way.

The sound that came out of Kahuna's mouth wasn't a whistle in response.

It was a yell, a very loud yell that made almost everyone freeze in fear.

Except for a group of navy-blue painted , green-eyed men who came out of the bushes and rushed at Sr. Morales men, shouting all the way.

And the warriors, who began sweeping up the class and pulling them into the jungle.

And Stella and Miles, who ran straight towards Alom's Strike, going through the opening the blue men had forced.

Helga looked to her side to see Rhonda get scooped up. Thinking fast, she grabbed Nadine's arm and pushed her toward her friend and the warrior.

"My camera!" Nadine reached out for it, and missed, trapped in the warrior's grasp. She watched in horror as it landed on the ground and bounced.

Nadine's camera _was_ a good idea. Helga grabbed it by the strap, wrapping around her hand.

And then she ran straight after Arnold's parents.

* * *

"You will walk outside of this hole very, very carefully. When you step outside, you will look at your parents and tell them that you are fine and safe. And then you and I will walk back into the city. You will not move before I tell you."

He neared his face closer to the fourteen-year-old's. "I want you to know that while I am holding my fortune in my left hand," he tightened his grip on La Corazon, tucking it in the crook of his arm, "my machete is in my right hand. And my right hand is my best machete hand.

"If you're still thinking about running ahead of me, if you're still trying to save the day, it will be the last thing you do." La Sombra motioned him to turn around with his weapon. "I _promise_ you that." He growled, waving it in emphasis.

Arnold nodded his head, clicking his flashlight on and walking ahead into the darkness.

He didn't know how long it had taken for them to get down here, but he knew that it would be a shorter trip out. Which meant he didn't have much time to figure out how he was going to get La Corazon out of La Sombra's hands and into his own.

Trying to just yank it out right now wasn't safe. The only one way he could escape right now was same one La Sombra would use to follow him. The tunnel was too small and uneven for running. One of his hands was already occupied with the flashlight; to drop that took away the advantage of sight. He probably couldn't come close to the strength La Sombra had either. And it wasn't like he had a machete in his hands.

Plus, if something went wrong here, if somehow La Corazon dropped and fell and broke...

He needed to be outside. Being outside would've been better. There was more room to maneuver outside, plus there was that window of time when La Sombra would be climbing up. The best time to do anything would be then. He could try to call out to his parents. Having them beside him would work to get La Corazon back. His dad had to be as strong if not stronger than La Sombra.

But he couldn't be sure that they would be able to get to him in time. Even if they were able to move from around the village men, they still had all those steps to climb. And that gave La Sombra plenty of opportunity to get ready for them...not to mention use that machete.

The same machete he suddenly felt on his back. "You're walking too fast, boy. Stay close."

Arnold slowed himself down. He had to keep the two of them inside until he came with a plan but everything just didn't seem like it could work well enough.

_Think! There has to be some way to get La Corazon out of his hands! But I need to make sure that I'm holding it too, that way if he falls or something, it's still safe._

And then, for some odd reason, Helga suddenly popped into his head.

Not Helga exactly—more like something Helga used to do to him when they were younger. He didn't know why it was popping up in his head right now, but maybe it would work.

It wasn't like he was coming up with any other good ideas or even had time to think about any alternatives. And it _was _pretty simple—maybe a little _too_ simple come to think of it—but, it always seemed to work for her.

They had finally made it to the rope and opening of Alom's Strike before he had even realized it. "Get up there. And _don't move._"

He was really out of other options; what he had thought of was as good as it was going to get. He just needed the right window to do it.

Arnold grabbed the rope and climbed up and out of the hole, La Sombra close behind. Looking out, he could see everyone below in total chaos. La Sombra's men fighting with a bunch of other guys—the warriors—and his classmates getting pulled out to safety. Everyone's yelling reached his ears like a tidal wave. But he couldn't see his parents anywhere. Where were they? How was his plan going to work if they weren't here?"

"I _knew_ something like this would happen." La Sombra had made his way up, La Corazon still in the grip of his arm, machete in his belt loop as always. "Those idiots couldn't be trusted with anything." His free hand reached for the grip of his weapon, sliding it out from its place. "I _am_ going to get out of this city with La Corazon! And I'll cut through all those monkeys to do it!"

His eyes shifted to Arnold. "But first—I need you! Come here!"

This was now or never.

Fully turning to La Sombra, Arnold's left had grabbed the older man's right wrist, pushing his machete back in its belt loop. His free hand grabbed at the head of La Corazon, his grip around its neck. Pushing his full weight towards La Sombra, Arnold shoved him until the man's footing wavered.

He saw the world slow down as he wrenched La Crazon free from La Sombra's grip.

"_iLa Corazon!" _A cry from below pierced through the air and hit his ears.

Somewhere in the air, he could hear someone yelling something strange that he couldn't understand. And then another voice from down below yelled the same thing again.

"No! Where are you going?" That was another voice—his mother's voice.

He curled his entire arm around it and stepped back from La Sombra as quickly as he could. All he had to do was move fast enough to get out out of his reach, get his footsteps right and move. His foot dug into the dirt to give him the push he needed.

But wasn't quick enough. La Sombra's hand reached out for his right arm as he twisted away. _"GIVE ME BACK LA CORAZON! IT'S MINE!"_

He looked back fast enough to see the machete raised high in the air. The sound of it cutting the air filled his ears. And then a sharpness across his forearm.

"Argh!" He twisted his arm in his captor's grip, trying to keep from getting cut again.

"_Arnold! _He's been cut!"

"Arnold! ..._Helga_, get back!"

* * *

She had the worst stitch in her side from running up all those steps. They were still in his sights...but they weren't running up to Alom's Strike anymore.

"Helga?" Miles looked at her in disbelief. "Why are you here?" He caught her in his arms, blocking her view. "You have to go back down!"

"_iLa Corazon!_" She suddenly heard the yell from down below.

Stella tore her confused gaze from the young girl to look at the foot of the stairs.

Helga looked back long enough to see the warriors ceasing their attack. Their eyes were slowly focused on the top of the platform. One by one, they all lowered their machetes and bowed their heads.

"No! No—Miles, one of them saw La Corazon! They've stopped fighting!"

"They can see it from down there?" He let Helga go. "No...no no no." He cupped his hands to his mouth, drew in a big breath and began yelling in that language Helga couldn't understand. His face began turning red with the effort. From below, she could hear another voice yelling—maybe Kahuna's—and the sounds of fighting picking up again.

There wasn't any time for this. She brought herself past Arnold's parents and continued her trek with some reserve energy she hadn't had before. Her legs continued pumping up the stairs, barely touching the limestone.

She could practically feel Stella and Miles following her.

"No! Where are you going?"

The top of Alom's Strike.

There he was, his leg sprung back in a run with La Corazon in his arm. And La Sombra grasping his right elbow, twisting and straightening his arm out. She watched Arnold turn and watch as the machete raised into the air and came down on his arm.

"Argh!" He began to twist and turn, trying to yank himself free.

"_Arnold!_" That was Stella. "He's been cut!"

"Arnold!" Miles shouted.

_NOOOOOO!_

Helga to the two of them, pushing through all the pain she was really starting to feel now.

"Helga, get back!"

Sr. Morales looked over to the sound of Miles' voice, looking her straight in the eye. She felt her hand, the one with the camera, cocked back and swung it towards his face. A thrill of pleasure rippled through her as she saw it connect with his temple.

He stumbled to the side, letting go of his machete and his grip on Arnold's arm.

"Helga?" Those green eyes of his looked at her, bewilderment all over his face.

She kicked the machete away from them. _It's near Sr. Morales_, she thought. _That's great, genius! Because he __didn't _just _cut Arnold's arm. And it's not like he couldn't do it again. _"C'mon, get up! Move, move!"

"Helga!" Stella yelled at her as her hand pressed into the side of La Sombra's face, trying her best to dig her fingernails into his cheek. Miles was practically twisting the river pirate's arm, trying to wrench the machete from his hand. She landed on the ground hard when La Sombra threw her off. "Take Arnold and run!"

She half-pulled, half-dragged him up and started their run once more, away from the steps where Arnold's parents were fighting. Almost immediately, she realized the way she had picked was wrong way—she couldn't have been more wrong with her directions. Already she could see over the edge of the platform and the more valley and cliff below. "Arnold...we have to...turn back!"

She half-skidded to a stop and began to turn away from the cliff, but the run was cut short as she watched the sight way in front of her. Miles had La Sombra's hand—his right hand—in his and was twisting it to get the machete out. With a clang, the metal dropped out of La Sombra's hand and Miles grabbed it, throwing it to the foot of the stairs.

She almost smiled at the flash of metal being whirled in the air. But that thought ended when she saw La Sombra rear back and connect the back of his head with Miles' nose.

* * *

Arnold watched as his father stumbled back and loosened his hold on La Sombra. It was like a bad dream coming true when the river pirate began to stand on his feet and began towards him and Helga. Again. His gait was slow after his scuffle, but it was sure.

"There's nowhere else for you to go! Give me La Corazon! I _will_ have it! And you _will _give it to me!"

"What are we gonna do?" Helga was doubled over beside him, her arm wrapped around her waist. "The only way we could be safe now is if we go down the steps to Kahuna. And the only way to get there is through him." Her blue eyes flitted up to the far away stairs and then to him.

He gripped La Corazon in his arms, his eyes set on La Sombra. "Then that's what we have to do."

She straightened up, a wince written on her face. "Are you crazy? You're the one holding La Corazon!"

His arms tightened their hold. In spite her words, his brain was already working on hatching a scheme, his eyes drinking in the sight of the river pirate coming towards them, his silhouette getting larger and larger. "If I get a running start, I can slide underneath him feet first."

"What? Like—Mickey Kaline? Arnold, that's a stupid idea!"

"We don't have any other ideas!" Arnold took one last look at her. "Trust me on this." He expected her to shoot the idea down, but then—

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yes, 'okay!'" She swallowed visibly at the sight of La Sombra. He was almost there.

"I will tear La Corazon from your hands, you stupid _ninos_! There's no one to save you now. I will take La Corazon and push you over that cliff!"

"Lead with your shoulder when you start to slide and really cradle it. If you do it like that, La Corazon will be safe."

"And you'll come after?" He looked over at her, a wrinkle across his brow.

"Yeah." Her jaw clenched. "—RUN!"

Suddenly, before he could really realize it, she broke off into a full-fledged sprint to the other side of the platform. Arnold followed, trying to catch up, slowly closing in the gap between them. Helga was in his sight, she was right in front of him, in a bit of an arch around their pursuer. She was going to have to run faster than him; if he was going to get past La Sombra with La Corazon, she was going to have to give him more room—

He watched as she suddenly veered to the left and headed straight to their pursuer. Her arms pushed against the river pirate's side, making him stumble backward.

"NO! HELGA!"

"RUN!" Her head whipped to him and her body twisted to right her path, her hair billowing out behind her. Her face grimaced in pain as La Sombra's hand grabbed her hair. "KEEP RUNNING!" Her hand helplessly tried to connect with the man's face, her face turning red and her eyes watering as he continued pulling.

The momentum he already had stopped him from stopping and going back to her.

And then, suddenly, it was a pair of arms that stopped him.

His eyes briefly connected with those of a strong-jawed, tattooed face with green eyes. A Green-Eyed warrior.

Yelling in all tones and pitches suddenly filled his ears.

The chief appeared to view, his tall, muscular frame headed towards the two. He saw the arm of the the warrior slam into the face of La Sombra, sending him to the ground, and the other trying to untangle his hand from Helga's scalp. More men came into view, some pulling and half-carrying Helga away, the others restraining her captor and wrestling him to the ground, his arms twisted behind him and his face pressed against the ground.

Arnold couldn't understand what it was the chief yelled, but there was no denying it when the sounds grew louder.

It was over.

He disentangled himself from the warrior's grasp, La Corazon still in hand, searching for her. His mind was in a kind of daze. "Helga! ...Helga!"

"I'm over here! Where are you?"

And then he suddenly saw her, her face a little strained, but otherwise fine. He watched as her eyes tried to scan for him through the crowd of warriors, finally landing on him. She stared at him for a minute before her face broke out in a smile—_the _smile, the one he remembered from the plan a week ago.

And maybe part of it was the relief he felt, but the moment he saw it, the feeling he had had all week came back and was stronger than ever. It felt like a bunch of butterflies started flying around in his stomach at once.

Somehow, his feet found his way over to her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine, Arnold. Are you okay? Is your arm okay?"

To be honest, he had almost forgotten the cut...maybe it wasn't as deep as he had thought it was. He nodded, feeling the dip of all those butterflies again.

Suddenly, Helga and her smile got very close to him and her arms reached out to him. He panicked for a moment at just how close she was coming towards him, not expecting when his arms suddenly felt lighter.

He looked down to see La Corazon cradled in her embrace.

"Arnold," she pulled away from him, "go."

"Go?"

"Yeah, go. Go meet your parents." Those royal blue eyes of hers looked over his shoulders.

He turned. To see _them_ standing a little ways behind him. Again, his feet pulled him towards their direction. In the hours that had passed between seeing them in the square and here, now seemed to turn into seconds. They were still the same as before at that time. His mind was firing off nothing but questions—_Will they like me? What do I say? Do I hug them?_

And suddenly, he was in front of them and all those questions didn't matter anymore.

They were so close, so very close. Closer than in his dreams. Closer than Grandpa's stories. Closer than what he had spent maybe his entire life imagining.

The smile they gave him was so warm. "Hey, Arnold." His name on his mom's lips sounded so perfect and right.

"Hey...Mom and Dad." The titles on his lips sounded so perfect and right. Those words finally had faces and people to be matched to. Real people.

He let himself be snatched up in their arms. He let them crush him. He crushed them back. He was almost as tall as his mom; his tears wet her shoulder. His dad towered above them, his hand in his hair.

They felt so wonderful in his arms.

"I can't believe you're so tall now...You look just the way I imagined..." They murmured in his ears.

Finally, his mom pulled away from him, her jellybean-green eyes searching into his. "We promise to never let you out of our sight—ever."

He smiled. "Me too. I promise to never let you out of my sight. Ever." He hugged her tightly again. A smile spread across the fourteen-year-old's face.

* * *

_**In the would-be movie, Arnold would kiss Helga as they and Gerald escaped the danger that would be looming over their shoulders at the time. Gerald is supposed to have seen the couple and reply to their cover-ups with, "Whatever you say."**_

* * *

_a/n: I am very very sorry that it's taken me so long to update this. Thank you to everyone who's R&R'd and put me on their alerts. I have the epilogue to do and then "The Jungle Movie" is over._

_There was a lot of action and movement in this chapter, so I hope the picture was clear enough in your heads like it was in mine. I remember in "The Journal" episode that Stella has on opportunity to look at La Corazon, but is stopped by Miles who says it's too sacred. I just ran with when depicting the warriors stopping. _

_And while a kiss between our favorite boy and girl would've been awesome, I decided to pull the AU card and not do it...yet(?)._

_Thanks again. R&R_

_s/n: I should also mention that I've re-edited/vamped my other chapters, so when it's all said and done, feel free to re-read. _


	11. Them & Her

_They couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe what they were seeing. _

_The sign in Grandma's hands fell to the floor, her hands rushing to her mouth. Grandpa slowly rose from the airport chair. His old eyes widened, his eyebrows lifted to his forehead. The entire airport seemed to fade away. There was Arnold, a little more tanned and roughed up with a bandage on his arm, but still fine. _

_But beside him..._beside_ him._

"_Mama Loni," he murmured quietly, "I must be dreaming." But Arnold's hand on his shoulder felt real to the touch. And Pookie hugging them—that seemed real. Pookie _had_ been real five minutes ago. But Miles? Stella? _

"_It's not a dream, Grandpa," Arnold assured him. "I found them. I really found them."_

* * *

**The Jungle Movie Fanfic**

Arnold embarks to San Lorenzo to find his parents. AU & OOC Warnings.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Hey Arnold!_

* * *

They had been back for a few days. And there were some moments in the day when he still couldn't believe it.

Their last days in San Lorenzo had been rushed—rushing to get back to the site in time, rushing to get to the United States embassy in the capital city to get passports in time, rushing to get on the plane with the rest of the class.

The moment they had returned home, the two of them had spent the day sleeping on and off in Grandma and Grandpa's bed. Arnold had spent that entire first day walking in and out of the room just to make sure that he still wasn't dreaming. But there they were, exhausted and in existance.

He was skipping school that week. He wasn't exactly sure what Grandpa had told the school for his absence, but he had decided to deal with it when he went back. Besides, he hadn't missed any days yet and Gerald was probably going to come by with his assignments eventually; he could afford to miss the week.

He had too many questions that had nothing to do with school anyway:

"_Why was your plane never found?"_

"_How long were you in the jungle before La Sombra found you?"_

And he had so many questions to answer himself:

"_What's your favorite color?"_

"_What's your school like?"_

"_What's your favorite holiday?" _

They had really wanted to wait before trying to figure out what to say before they went around and re-introduced themselves to their neighbors and met Arnold's teachers and friends' parents. But Mr. Kokoshka had forced their hand almost immediately. In what he called "joy at the return of Miles and Stella in the lives of young Arnold, Grandpa and Grandma, and the boarders," he had gone to the local newspaper, the _Daily News_, with the story of their return. The reporter wanted to set up a time for an interview mid-week.

In the seconds after his announcement, he had taken one good look at Stella's angry face and promptly left the dining room table and the boarding house.

They decided in the end to claim "dissociative fugue." Arnold had found the phrase on the Internet.

"_It says that dissociative fugue _'_is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, but there is complete amnesia for the fugue episode.'"_

"_Then that's what we'll claim." Miles and Stella locked eyes in understanding. "And Arnold, you'll stick to your story—change only a few parts. We're going to get a lot of attention, but if we let anything slip, every major news source and the entire archaeological community is going to be at our front door trying to know what we know. We have to make sure that our parts are clear. It's still our responsibility to protect the Green-Eyes and their city. " Miles said._

"_Okay," Stella nodded, agreeing with the idea, the tension she had been feeling all day leaving her body. "But does that guy know how badly I'm going to punch him the next time I see him? Because when I find him, I'm really going to punch him!" _

"_Now, Stella, there's no need to be upset. You all found a solution to the problem and everything is going to be fine." Grandpa put a comforting hand on his daughter-in-law's shoulder. "Besides, you're going to have to take a number to punch Oskar. Because when _I _find that _two-timing, swindling con artist_, I'm going to punt him from here to Istanbul!"_

Most of his time had been spent trying to get his parents as used to life at home as much as he could. He knew that most of what they were going to learn was going to have to be self-taught, but that didn't mean that he wasn't excited to explain things to them.

"_So...you can go on the Internet...and find information on anything you want?" his parents peered at Arnold's laptop screen with furrowed brows._

"_Yeah." Arnold nodded. He tried not to smile at the looks of heavy concentration on their faces. _

"_So...if I want to know about George Washington, I can just type it in...'Google'?"_

"_Yeah."_

"_Okay," Miles nodded in understanding. "And if I wanted to add music to your grandma's...?"_

"_iPod." Stella filled in._

"_Right, right iPod...I can go on the Internet."_

"_Sometimes, but iTunes is better." _

_His dad blinked. "...what?"_

Or filling them on what his life had been like since when they had left to now. Birthday parties, holidays, contests, baseball games, Science projects. They had scoured all the photo albums and home videos that were in the den, watching the younger him go through all the motions.

"_Arnold?" his dad suddenly asked. It was Wednesday evening. They had survived the interview and were now going through pictures of Arnold's third birthday party. The two of them had paused at a picture of him and Grandpa smiling at the camera with chocolate cake crumbs and red frosting on their faces. "Are you...Are you mad at us for all the things we missed? Have you ever been mad at us for leaving and not...being here for the things we were supposed to be here to see?" _

_They both looked up at him, sadness and guilt unmistakable in their eyes._

_Arnold stared at them for a minute before answering. "Sometimes. Most of the time, though, I just wondered where you were. When I found the journal and read about you and the Green-Eyes, I understood why you left. The Green-Eyes are family; you had to help them._

"_But I never really doubted that I couldn't find you guys." He paused for a second. "I'm really happy I found you."_

"_We're really happy we found you. And we're not going anywhere. We're going to be here for everything from now on. We promise." Stella hand reached for his._

"_I know." He squeezed her hand in his, happy for the feeling._

"_We love you, Arnold."_

"_I love you, too, Mom and Dad."_

* * *

"_**Dear Arnold,**_

"_**On behalf on the Smith Institution of Anthropology, I would like to congratulate you on finding your parents. Hearing your story from Dr. Angelo Ramirez's reports and reading your story in **__**The New York Times **__**certainly brought us joy. As I stated before, Miles and Stella Shortman have contributed greatly to our efforts and we hope, with time, they would be willing to once again to offer their help and insight.**_

"_**But personally, I would like to express my joy at your discovery and to be as honest as I can at this point in time. **_

"_**You finding your parents is an accomplishment I failed to do many years ago when I convinced them to once again go back to San Lorenzo and aid the Green-Eyed People. I am sure you have by now heard the story about the storm we were caught in upon reaching the jungle, our decision to escape our plane, and our forced separation. But you would not have known the rest of my story, as fantastic it is: my landing in another part of the jungle and my journey to civilization; my return to The States; my own failed efforts to find your parents; and my decision to give up my personal search.**_

"_**I am sure that decision, my lack to contact you before receiving your letter all those months ago, and the added deception of my pseudonym in my first letter have directly and indirectly caused you much pain. For that, I am sorry. But I hope for and welcome the opportunity for you, your parents, and myself to meet once more as colleagues, friends, and family. I wish nothing but the best for you, Stella, and Miles.**_

"_**Sincerely your friend,**_

"_**Dr. Eduardo del Verde Rosa, PhD**_

"_**Head Chairman of The Smith Institution of Anthropology"**_

* * *

Arnold heard the hinges on his sky-roof squeak and looked over to see his dad walking towards him, a couple of bottles of Yahoo! sodas in hand. "Here you go."

"Thanks."

Miles smiled at his son and joined him in his task of leaning over the edge of the roof and watching the neighborhood go by below them. "You do this a lot?"

"Every once in awhile."

"I did too when I was younger." Both smiled at the commonality between them. Miles took a quick swig of his drink before looking over at his fourteen-year-old. "So...your mom told me Helga came by just now. Did you see her?"

Arnold nodded, his eyes trailing to where he had seen her walk. "Yeah."

_It wasn't like he'd forgotten about Helga, but he hadn't known part of him had wanted to actually see Helga until he had opened the front door that afternoon and saw her standing on the other side, a bunch of folders in her hand. His stomach immediately started doing flips and he felt his pits break out in a sweat._

_She spent maybe two seconds frozen at the sight of him, but then suddenly came to life. "Um, Gerald was gonna come by with the work you missed in your classes, but his mom came to pick him up early at school. So, __uh, he gave everything to me." She handed him the folders.  
_

"_Thanks." He took the folders from her. _

_She didn't leave. __His mouth was trying to say something else to her, but he stayed frozen and she fidgeted, pulling at the long, red sleeves of her shirt and then messing with her bow tied around her wrist. Her hair, falling in that perfect way it did kept him from really  
_

"_Helga?" They both heard the unmistakable joy in Stella's voice at seeing the young girl. She untied her apron and wiped her hand, smearing flour on the side of her face in the process. "It's good to see you!"_

"_Thanks. I came by to give Arnold " the glance she gave him was probably the first time she'd actually looked at him, "his work...and see you."_

"_Oh?"_

"_Yeah, um," her eyes flashed over to his, draw by the fact he hadn't really stopped looking at her. "Um, Big...my dad saw the bruise on my back on accident and kinda freaked. He wanted to take me to the doctor's, but I told him I'd take care of it. I was wondering if you could look at it?"_

_Stella nodded, her glance going between the two teens. She began to untie the apron around her waist and place it on her shoulder. "Okay, I'll take a look at it; it's probably already healing. But you should probably still go to the doctor. Let's go to the den."_

"_Thanks." Helga glanced at him once more before walking past him and falling behind his mom. The door to the den closed behind them with a soft click._

"Dad, when we were in the jungle, before me and everybody found the city, Helga told me that she...loved me. And...she wanted to know how I felt about her."

In the corner of Arnold's eye, he saw his dad nod slowly, the kind people did when things made sense. Miles turned from the sight of the neighborhood and sat on the edge of the roof, taking another drink of his soda. "What'd you say?"

"I told her I couldn't give her an answer. But now..." He, too, turned from everything and opted to sit on the roof's edge. "Now, I know that I'm starting to like like her too. But I feel like it's too late..."

"How?"

"I don't know...maybe because I rejected her."

Miles stopped mid-gulp and looked over at his son before shaking his head in disbelief. "I didn't think when we found each other, you and I would already have to talk about girl problems." He grinned at the sky and overpass above. "Telling Helga that you didn't know how you felt about her isn't really the same thing as rejecting her. I know at fourteen it seems that way, but it's not."

Arnold picked up his bottle of soda but then placed it down again. "But what if she doesn't think the same way about me anymore? What if me not telling her yes or no made her dump all her feelings for me?"

"I can't answer that, but from what I can tell after meeting Helga, her feelings don't seem like they change that quickly or easily. The only way you're going to know for sure is if you tell her."

"What if it's not that easy? What if I waited for too long?"

A deep _hum_ rumbled in Miles' throat as he tried to figure out what to say next.

"Sometimes, I think the story of Anka giving Alom her heart holds the solution to many—um what was it? "like like"?-problems. I think that when Anka gave her heart to Alom, it was just a heart; I don't even think he knew what to do with it. But I like to imagine Anka was willing to wait because once Alom _did_ understand, his own feelings and love for Anka started to grew. For me, _that's _when La Corazon began to exist, when after all that time, Alom began to understand.

"...Of course, you and Helga are different, but minus a few details here and there, the story is kind of the same."

Miles stood with his empty soda bottle in hand, and reached Arnold's untouched one. He put his hand on the back of Arnold's neck and gave him a comforting squeeze, his smile growing as Arnold's eyes seemed to light with some understanding.

"Your mom's trying to relearn how to make your grandma's raspberry cobbler, which means that we're going to have to eat them. From what I can remember, it's gonna take awhile for her to get it entirely right, and she's not going to want anyone to eat dinner before it's ready so you might want to step out for a minute. And grab some pizza with Helga on the way."

* * *

Arnold was standing at the bottom of her stoop. And he was wearing a shirt that was different from the one he'd had on at home.

She had been annoyed before she had walked outside, her mind bothered at Nadine's week-long mission to get her to pay her for a new camera and memory card. Helga had finally conceded to Nadine's argument that while the camera _had_ helped taken La Sombra down, she had stolen and broken it in the process and she had to replace it with a new one. Her mind had been on getting to downtown and buying the stupid camera. And if she could get it to Nadine before the streetlights came on, even better.

But immediately, all those thoughts went out the window at seeing him. Her stomach gave a bit of a lurch and she stared at him, unsure of why he was there after seeing him about an hour ago. "Arnold?"

"Um, are you going somewhere?"

"...Yeah."

"Can I walk with you?"

She nodded and made her way beside him, half-leading the path down the street; where ever she had been going before wasn't important anymore. There were a million thoughts racing around her head with nowhere to really go. Her eyes kept glancing over at him, trying not to sweat through her shirt. His entire...his _face_ and body language was entirely too calm; he wasn't doing the things he did when he was nervous.

"Is your bruise okay?"

"Huh? Yeah, your mom says it's healing, so everyone can breathe easy, I guess." Her hand absently combed through the ends of her hair, just for something to do.

Why was she the only one freaking out right now? And why was she freaking out worse than when she had been standing at his front door? Her fingers wouldn't stop combing. If she didn't stop, she was going to make herself bald and sweaty!

"Hey?" His fingers reached out to touch her arm, the feeling making goosebumps rise on her arm underneath the red cotton fabric. "Wanna stop here for a second?"

Her eyes absorbed the beginning of the bridge and she swallowed through the lump in her throat. "Yeah, sure." She let him lead the way towards the unofficial boarder between the neighborhood and city. They found a spot and leaned on the rail, staring into the water and trying to calm down. Helga's eyes fixated on the river, a deep blue now the the sky was in the beginnings of sunset.

"Helga?" Her eyes pulled away from the water to stare at his green eyes. "I just want to say thanks for helping me find my parents."

Part of her anxiety disappeared with the words. "Yeah, I'm happy that we found them, too. Do they like it here? I mean...is everything the same for them?"

She smiled at the sight of the corners of his mouth pulling up into a small smirk. "Things are a little different here and there, but things are mostly the same for them." The smirk went away, but she recognized the way his hands kept wiping themselves on his jeans—n_ow _he was as nervous as she felt. "Helga, I have something to say. About, about what you told me...that night."

A little bit of wind sucked itself out of her. It wasn't that she had forgotten that night, she had just opted not to think about it and instead be happy at the overall outcome. "Yeah?"

"I know when you said you loved me," her stomach lurched again and she felt a fleeting feeling of embarrassment, "I told you that I couldn't tell you how I felt."

She began to shake her head, to tell him that it was okay and he should forget it, but he cut her off. "But now that it's over, I want to tell you that...I like you, Helga."

The whole, entire world seemed to change in that entire second. From his mouth, four words—not the exact four words she had always hoped for, but four very important words—had rushed out. The moment she had always hoped for had finally happened. And now, he stood in front of her and waited for her to say something back at him.

"What?"

Of _course_ she'd say something like that. Because _that_ wasn't the worse word to say in any situation.

"I like you, Helga."

And now she couldn't say _anything_. She must've not reached her "Stupid Quota" when Gerald had come up to her earlier today and pretty much told her that she was going to give Arnold his assignments.

"I like you, Helga. I know me saying that isn't close to what you told me, but maybe one day, with time, I'll feel the same. I don't know if you want to wait for that long and I could understand if you've stopped feeling something for me, but...I like you, Helga. And I want you to wait until then."

She blinked as she tried to process his words and swallowed a boulder that had seemed to crop up in the last minute. She came closer to him, her heart thumping like crazy. "I still do...love you, Arnold." Her teeth began to chew at her bottom lip. "And, and, and I can wait for you to love me back." That's all she could get out now that he was holding her hand. And smiling at her like that.

She didn't hesitate when he came up closer to her and she felt something press against her mouth. His lips. She didn't do the things she did when she was little and tricked him into kissing her; there wasn't all that dumb moaning and...head twisting. Only the touch and her eyes fluttering shut and her head inflating and the numb feeling of her lips as he pulled away. It was funny how red his face was.

But it wasn't like her heart had stopped beating like crazy either. This whole thing was new now; no matter how much she had hoped for it and how much it now felt like the real thing, it was still new and unbelievable. There were another million questions on her mind. But for now, she just really caught between wishing this wasn't a dream and that he would kiss her again and that she could take a picture of the way he looked now.

What a sec.

A picture. _Nadine's camera_, a very small and distant part of her mind, the one that kept up appearances of reality and normalcy, reminded her. _You're supposed to go get it, remember?_

Her mouth fixed up to try to say something, but he beat her to the punch again.

"Do you want to go to Tony's and get a pizza?" He asked, his face still inflamed.

Screw. Nadine's. Camera.

"Yeah." Her hand clasped his, trying to keep them together until then.

And they walked back to the neighborhood in the setting sun together.

* * *

_a/n: And there it is! The end of "The Jungle Movie!" Yay! Once again, thanks for the R&R love. _

_There's a lot to explain about this, I guess. First off, the Google/iTunes convo is me playing with the idea of what Miles and Stella have to get used to when coming back. In trying to make this as real and believable as possible, I had to think about the things they'd have to get re-acquaint themselves with and learn about after...13 years—from Arnold's childhood to his computer. (s/n: the "dissociative fugue" definition does exist on Wikipedia; check it out if you want)_

_Eduardo's letter was going to be a very long reunion scene but in first writing it, I felt like it was diverting from what I really wanted to get to. So I let most of the dramatics go and put the letter here instead. Just me trying to tie another loose end, but I think it works.  
_

_The HelgaxArnold kissing scene took the longest to write. I wanted to put a lot into it. I thought of all those scenes in the show where Arnold gets Grandpa's terrible advice, and wanted to change that by having Arnold and Miles. And in staying true to Arnold, I didn't want him to rush into him loving Helga. Helga has always been in the "love" stage, but Arnold's affection have had to through a lot of stages. So, in my mind, him saying he "like likes" her was a pretty big threshold in my mind. _

_Anyway...thanks again._

_(s/n: I played Lykee Li's "Little Bit" a lot while writing the final scene. Find it on YouTube and let it play while reading the end—it seemed really "Helga-esque", but I'll let you judge for yourself.)_

_-the-lionness  
_


End file.
